Worksafe New Zealand has launched a new website on manufacturing safety, full of helpful tips and guides. Manufacturing is vital to New Zealand’s economy employing around 240,000 people. It represents around 10% of the New Zealand workforce but contributes to 21% of workplace severe injury claims. There were 38 fatal accidents between 2008 and 2014…
“Quenched and tempered” (Q&T) steels for welded structures and pressure vessels provide enhanced hardness and strength properties compared to “regular” steels while maintaining adequate ductility, weldability and toughness. Steel manufacturers obtain these properties by using low alloy chemistries, heat treatment and controlled rolling. The regular structural grades of steel are designated by the specification, grade…
A regular enquiry received by HERA has been the application of fatigue design in steel bridges. On one hand, some designers have had trouble interpreting the current design rules; whilst on the other, many fabricators have expressed concerns on more expensive butt welds being specified for fatigue details where this might not be entirely necessary.…
During the last month, HERA asked members to endorse or reject a draft policy statement that “all critical building work independent of building material should be required to have reliable third party verification enforced by the MBIE-driven regulatory framework”. With the support of SCNZ, HERA described a pathway for a joint journey to get to…
In response to recent media coverage involving allegations that some building products are unfit for purpose or non-compliant with the Building Code, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) has established a dedicated email address to collect product complaints for analysis and investigation. Even though a number of concerns have been raised in the…
SCI has recently released an online based calculator for floor dynamic response prediction. Compared with the manual method proposed in SCI P354, the calculator investigates the floor vibration using finite element analysis of regular grids. For irregular floor grids, existing tools such as the Oasys design software should still be used. The online tool covers…
The Australasian Certification Authority for Reinforcing and Structural Steels was founded as a not-for-profit, voluntary, third party product certification scheme in 2000 and issued its first certificates of compliance in 2003 to AS/NZS 4671 for steel reinforcing materials. ACRS now provides additionally certificates of compliance to prestressing steels and structural steels to AS/NZS Standards 4672,…
It is of great pleasure to report that the following structural steel Standards and Technical specification were published in April 2016. HERA is a participating member of the BD-023 Committee, which has been working on the revision of the structural steel standards since 2012 for: AS/NZS 1163-2016 Cold-formed Structural Steel Hollow Sections AS/NZS 3678-2016 Structural…
Responding to the reinforcing steel mesh conformance issue recently highlighted in the media, HERA is driving a policy change that allows our members to deliver better value and remain competitive. With the rapid adoption of the Steel Fabrication Certification (SFC) scheme, our New Zealand steel construction industry has significantly progressed on its way to verifiable…
The drafts for public comment DR AS/NZS 1252.1 and DR AS/NZS 1252.2 have been published by Standards New Zealand. The objective of these draft standards is to provide manufacturers of high-strength steel bolt assemblies with requirements and tests to ensure that such assemblies are suitable for bolted connections in steelwork construction, consistent with the steel…
New Zealand’s structural steel fabricators are showing strong support for the industry’s recently launched quality assurance scheme, the Steel Fabricator Certification (SFC), an initiative designed to ensure safety of fabricated structural steelwork. Developed jointly by industry bodies HERA and Steel Construction NZ (SCNZ), the SFC scheme is based on the European system, which is part…
Like many other renewable energy technologies, grid connected wave and tidal energy seems poised ready for the kind of global build-out we saw in wind, which will bring a range of market opportunities. There are also emerging niche marine energy opportunities which are disconnected from the wholesale price of a kilowatt of electricity which governs…