As a part of the Mission to Seafarers celebration of 125 years in New Zealand, NZCEL has been collaborating in the design of a new memorial. The Seafarers’ Memorial is to be built outside the Wellington Cathedral of Saint Paul to memorialize the 125 years The Mission to Seafarers have been operating in New Zealand.
The centerpiece of the memorial is a 7-ton, 1890 naval anchor that was found at the bottom of the harbour in 1995. The anchor has been on the Hikitia Floating Crane and preserved by the Maritime Archaeological Association of New Zealand. NZCEL has been taking great care in designing the foundations and fixings of the anchor to ensure the conservation of the anchor is maintained by using compatible materials and corrosion protection.
As a part of the 125th Anniversary Celebrations a Gala Dinner at Government House was held. As a part of the Memorial Design team, Aaron King was invited to attend the dinner and was lucky enough to meet His Excellency Dr Richard Davies CStJ CF in his role as Patron of the Mission to Seafarers Oceania.
Aaron was honored to receive the invitation and celebrate the good works that the Mission to Seafarers have accomplished in their 125 years in New Zealand, and NZCEL is looking forward to completing the design of The Seafarers Memorial
Please click the link below to read article (4 min read)
Made possible through public funding and a significant donation from philanthropist Mark Dunajtschik, Te Wao Nui is a unique healthcare facility with a welcoming, calm and child-focused environment. The building’s rigorous technical, programmatic and seismic resilience requirements have been met. Also provided are generosity of space, daylight and views throughout, while innovations from overall building services distribution, patient-room cabinetry design and whanau facilities have been creatively incorporated. Moments of discovery and playfulness have been incorporated seamlessly into the building fabric, from the warmth of interior finishes to frit patterns on glazing. Landscape and playscape areas are inviting, with extensive green foliage softening public-access areas and buffering the building from the surrounding car park.
This residential development is located at 188-208 Victoria Street in Wellington.
There are three blocks of three-to-four-storey townhouses comprising 61 units and three five-storey apartment buildings comprising 41 apartments on the site.
The townhouses were designed with steel moment frames and precast concrete intertenancy walls with cross-laminated timber floors, allowing for easy and fast construction.
The three apartment buildings are timber structures with steel moment frames and a reinforced concrete wall ground floor for retail space at the base with an attached external steel frame steel breezeway providing access to the individual units.
NZCEL had the pleasure in working alongside Aoraki Construction and Architecture Plus for this new design project.
NZCEL has just recently agreed to collaborate with the Wellington School of Architecture at Victoria University. We will be offering tutoring sessions to the final year of structural design students. We think this is a great initiative to be supporting the next generation of the future architect’s.
NZCEL has been supporting a few events that are based on this idea, like the ARCHENGBUILT.
NZCEL has been looking into how we as a company can reduce our impact on the environment. According to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) the Building and Construction Sector is responsible for 20% of New Zealand’s carbon emission. This includes operational energy (lights, heating, appliances etc.) and embodied carbon from the construction, maintenance, and demolition of buildings.
While we as structural engineers have very little to do with the operational energy usage of a building, our choices can have a large impact on the embodied carbon of a building. And as more efficient appliances are made, and greener sources of energy are harnessed the onus on the embodied carbon to be reduced will increase.
MBIE is in the process of creating a framework for reducing the carbon emission of the Building and Construction Sector. The planned implementation of this framework begins with requiring the calculation of the embodied carbon of all new buildings . This will lead into a cap on the allowable embodied carbon of a building, that will decrease overtime until net zero buildings is reached. While no timeframe for implementation has been decided on, we as a building community already have the tools currently to measure the embodied carbon, and the options to reduce our embodied carbon.
At NZCEL we have been using Institution of Structural Engineers’ “How to Calculate Embodied Carbon” to assess the embodied carbon of some of our projects, along with the affect some changes in designs we have made. In some of our recent projects we have used Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) panels as a part of our flooring system. We compared the embodied carbon of two similarly sized recent designs, one with a traditional concrete floor and one with CLT flooring system, to see the difference CLT makes. In comparing these two projects we found that using CLT as a part of the flooring system saved around 70 tons of CO2e for a floor area of roughly 1,250 m2. This is roughly equivalent to driving 350,000 km or driving from Bluff to Cape Reinga 170 times.
While CLT flooring systems are an excellent way of reducing a buildings carbon footprint and building weight (and therefore earthquake loads), there are still challenges in designing and using CLT. As it is a relatively new product there are few “accepted solutions” that will allow for fast design and consenting, and steel diaphragms are often used in tandem with CLT to simplify construction and design.
Manufactured timber products will become more common place in design as we look at how we can reduce our carbon footprint. An increased focus on our impact on the environment as an industry is leading to more research and alternative solutions to simplify design and construction.
At NZCEL we are increasing our competency in timber design so that we can provide high quality designs with lower impacts on our planet. As we are continuing to increase our understanding of how to calculate and reduce the embodied carbon of the structures we design, we will be able to provide a running start when the new framework is implemented.
For more information on MBIEs proposed framework for embodied carbon reduction follow the link below
O’Neill’s Building, Colonial Mutual Building, Duke’s Building. Corner of Courtney Place & Tory Street.
New Zealand Consulting Engineer Ltd. just completed an interesting seismic strengthening project at the corner Tory Street and Courtenay Place.
Five buildings were combined into one by bolting all four buildings to the bank building and strengthening its core with a large shear wall.
While ensuring the buildings were seismically upgraded, it was important to ensure and respect their heritage and original architecture.
Furthermore, it was also important to keep the businesses operating during construction.
“It’s hard to detect where all the concrete and steel went into ..certainly ‘invisible’ a great result.”
We worked on this project with HMO architects and Peter Camp Construction. Thanks to everyone, and well done !
The new apartment building of Sunset West at the corner of Victoria Street and Karo drive is growing. The sixth concrete floor is currently under construction. NZCEL is proud to support the Aoraki construction team and the design architects of Design Group Elliot Stapleton. #apartmentstructure #newbuilt construction #structuralengineerswellingtonNZCEL is proud to be part of the team delivering the world class Wellington Children’s Hospital together with McKee Fehl, Studio Design + Architecture and of course the main benefactor and client Mark Dunajtschik.NZCEL have targeted the resilience objective of immediate re-occupancy, functional recovery within 72 hours and financial cost of less than 2.5% of total building cost following a design level earthquake.
Resilience was achieved by incorporating Earthquake Protection System’s Triple Pendulum Friction Bearings. These bearings separate the building from the ground via low friction curved sliding planes.
This system is very effective at reducing accelerations and the building inter-storey drift (how much the floor moves in relation to the ceiling). This reduces damage to internal partitions, fittings, and services. This is important to protect this from damage as these parts make up 75% of the overall cost of the building.
The hospital is scheduled to be completed in mid-2021.
#wellingtonstructural #childrenshospital #newzealandstructural #seismic design #isolation
So the question is: Are Engineers scientists or artists?
Art: n, Practical skill, or its application, guided by principles; application of skill to works of creative imagination.(from Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary)
This below quote has been taken from the book “Engineering risk” 1983. Interestingly, it was written 37 years ago and is more valid now than ever before:
“It should be a fundamental of our profession that we are practising an art, not a science. In some fields of engineering we practise a science-based art, but in all areas engineering judgement, based on knowledge and experience plays a major role.
As we are not working with exact figures or complete knowledge, it is inherent that our work or our profession opinions will be less than perfect, and that those who use our skills are at risk that our performance will be less than their expectations.
It should be a policy of our Institution to encourage an understanding of this philosophy by the public and the profession.
We should be aware that complex codes, intended to reduce total construction costs or to create safer buildings, generally require a greater engineering input. Unless the client or employer accepts this and makes financial provisions for this increased engineering input, there is a damage that our profession may not be able to provide a level of service to match those expectations. “
This can be referred to our latest assessment codes, also known as Red and Yellow Book, that explain the degree of judgment and engineering effort in the assessment process.
Each of the ISA (Initial Seismic Assessment) or DSA (Detailed Seismic Assessment) processes can be carried out with a varying degree of knowledge and detail. The further the assessment processes moves to the right in the chart below, the more reliable should be the result, albeit at generally greater cost for the assessment.
At all levels of assessment, the judgement of the engineer is an important input.
During an ISA, the level of judgement required is higher as little data is known on which to base the assessment on. The need for judgement and experience rises from ISA to DSA and in particular if more sophisticated analysis techniques are employed in a DSA because the results can become very dependent on the inputs, and experience will be necessary to judge if the results are reasonable and valid.
NZCEL has undertaken several hundreds of assessments over the last years from simple to complex.
We are happy to assist you in your assessment, peer review and strengthening process.
Please reach us at info@nzcel.co.nz, or +64 4 4998878.
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