In order to ensure welding qualification tests are carried out correctly, personnel are appointed to witness welder/welding operator and/or welding procedure specification (WPS) qualification tests being performed. These tests involve welding and subsequent mechanical testing , and the personnel appointed need to be competent for the tasks they are expected to perform. A typical term…
Following the establishment of the New Zealand National Group of the International Association of Bridge and Structural Engineering (IABSE), Structural Systems General Manager Dr Stephen Hicks attended the IABSE Conference in Geneva in September 2015. The conference objective was ‘Providing Solutions to Global Challenges’, which was underpinned by following global themes: Climate Change and the…
The risk of fire and explosion is ever present with welding and thermal cutting and the fatal accident at an Auckland tank farm is a timely reminder of this. It is no coincidence that most welding equipment and welding consumables come with warnings either in the user instructions or on the packaging. Nor is it…
HERA has been alerted to the fact that there is a list of AS/NZS obsolete standards posted on Standards New Zealand’s web site. Among them are some standards on aluminium and stainless steel – see their website for further details. Sep252015 Update shared by our General Manager Dr Stephen Hicks Access Standards NZ website to find out more…
There is an increasing dialogue out in the market place about non-standard products being sold into the building and construction industry in NZ. The alleged numbers being reported are significant and almost somewhat unbelievable. But if they are anywhere near reality, we do need to be taking some form of action otherwise ‘Standards creep’ will…
As an extension to the Australian Journal of Structural Engineering paper that was reported in last month’s HERA News, the paper entitled ‘Australasian Advances in Steel & Composite Structures to Enhance Cross-Border Practice’ was delivered by Prof. Brian Uy (CIES Director and Chair of IABSE-Australia) at the 17th Association of Structural Engineers of the Philippines…
More than 80 professionals attended the seminars jointly-organised by the NZ Welding Centre and SCNZ in March. The seminars were held in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown. The seminars provided a comprehensive insight into normative requirements of the existing NZS 3404.1 and AS/NZS 1554 standard framework and included an overview of the Steel Fabricator…
HERA successfully provided SGD$180k savings to their client’s Singaporean 40-storey building Numerical simulations (i.e. advanced finite element analyses) have been performed for an overseas Client by HERA’s Structural Systems division in order to estimate the fire performance of a composite slab with a re-entrant profiled steel sheet used in a prestigious 40-storey building in Singapore.…
This month the 2011 edition of our most widely-used welding standard AS/NZS 1554.1 was superseded by the published 2014 edition. The expectation is that the new edition of the standard will now be implemented by all users. Standards are periodically reviewed to ensure they are up-to-date with developments in technology, to take account of changes…