3 Jul 2024
The Joint Committee for Seismic Assessment and Retrofit is inviting feedback on proposed changes to the Seismic Assessment Guidelines for non-earthquake prone buildings. Once published, the updated guidelines can be used by engineers when providing advice outside of earthquake-prone building system requirements.
The Red Book is the informal name given to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s 2017 Seismic Assessments of Existing Buildings – Technical Guidelines for Engineering Assessments (Seismic Assessment Guidelines). These must be used when carrying out seismic assessments under the earthquake-prone building system.
Engineers know seismic assessments and ratings are used for many purposes outside of the earthquake-prone building system, like marketing or insurance purposes. For any of these purposes an engineer may choose to use the non-EPB Seismic Assessment Guidelines.
Currently the only difference between the Red Book and the non-EPB Seismic Assessment Guidelines is an update to Section C5 (Concrete) released in 2018 (informally known as the Yellow Chapter).
Many sections of Part C of the guidelines – which describes how an engineer is to conduct a detailed seismic assessment (DSA) – have proposed changes. Most changes are in Section C5 and the updated non-EPB Seismic Assessment Guidelines will supersede the 2018 Yellow Chapter.
The proposed updates incorporate the latest engineering knowledge about how concrete buildings are likely to perform in an earthquake. They are expected to improve the clarity and accuracy of assessments and, on balance, in many cases are expected to improve the %NBS scores of certain elements.
Consultation
Engineering New Zealand is now collecting feedback on behalf of the Joint Committee. The Joint Committee will review feedback on the proposed changes. Once feedback has been considered, the updated non-EPB Seismic Assessment Guidelines will be published on the industry best practice website Design.Resilience.NZ
Consultation is now open until Thursday 15 August. Please complete the feedback form and send this to C5consultation@engineeringnz.org. The form contains separate sheets for responses to the “Proposed changes” and for “Other feedback”.
Webinar
A presentation on the proposed changes to C5 was hosted by the Auckland Structural Group earlier this year. You can view the presentation on the Auckland Structural Group’s website
Further information
The Joint Committee for Seismic Assessment and Retrofit oversees the non-EPB Seismic Assessment Guidelines. Its members are from MBIE, Natural Hazards Commission Toka Tū Ake, New Zealand Society of Earthquake Engineering, Structural Engineering Society of New Zealand and the New Zealand Geotechnical Society.
Further queries can be emailed to C5consultation@engineeringnz.org.
Technical queries will be forwarded to Ken Elwood, Chief Engineer, MBIE. Questions about this consultation process will be forwarded to Caleb Dunne, Principal Advisor Risk Reduction and Resilience on behalf of the Joint Committee.
This consultation on non-EPB Seismic Assessment Guidelines is not related to the earthquake-prone building system review MBIE is currently undertaking. For queries about the EPB building system review, contact building@mbie.govt.nz or visit MBIE’s website Earthquake-prone building and seismic risk management review | Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment (mbie.govt.nz).
