Confusion and frustration due to the old but legal earthquake rules

New research shows that there are intertwined seismic bases that can lead to owners strengthening the wrong parts of buildings, or having to pay twice to see if their floors are safe.

BNZ Harbor Quays Building. Photo: RNZ/Phil Pennington

Responsible engineers are urging to resolve what they call “this confusion,” but there is no indication when that might happen.

Research by the Department for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) compared the two sets of rules for engineers doing seismic assessments of commercial buildings.

It is not surprising that the newer rules have been found to be superior – but unfortunately only the older rules have legal standing.

New Zealand has thousands of multi-storey buildings with particularly weak types of precast concrete or hollow floors, which for 30 years have been known to be particularly precarious, and which sustained a lot of damage in the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake – as evidenced in BNZ Harbor Quays at Wellington, where floors crack and sag.

Cracks in floor trusses at the BNZ Harbor Quays building in Wellington after the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake. Photo: WSP Opus Report.

The researchers found that a hastily introduced rulebook in 2017 – the so-called Red Book – produces similar overall earthquake ratings (or New Building Standards – NBS) as more recent rules created in 2018 in response to Kaikōura.

But it also shows that old bases are not good at detecting the weakest parts of a building, especially not for concrete buildings or for floors, which are usually the weakest.

“This means that [two approaches] It identified various weaknesses in the buildings, which means that retrofits based on the Red Book may not address the building’s greatest weaknesses,” the new report said.

This made the complicated situation worse, she said.

Companies want to “know that retrofits address weaknesses in their buildings that pose a risk to people’s lives and safety” but the two sets of guidelines did not boost confidence.

However, the Red Book contains only rules that are legally required to be used in determining whether a building is subject to earthquakes.

Newer rules (called the Yellow Chapter, or Yellow Book) do not carry such weight, although engineers trust them more.

“There is confusion and frustration for engineers,” said one of the researchers, Dr. Nicholas Brook, echoing the frequent report that the industry wants a superior, newer yellow chapter to take control.

Confusion could result in a building owner being forced to do an earthquake-prone assessment under the Red Book, and then having to have a second assessment done under the Yellow Chapter, Brock told RNZ.

Dr. Nicholas Brock. Photo: Introduction

“In some circumstances, this will result in an arguably unnecessary additional cost for building owners.”

Jenny Tippler, MBIE’s director of building performance and engineering, said they should consider the research findings before deciding whether to incorporate yellow chapter into legislation.

It always had to balance cutting-edge engineering knowledge against the “need to provide certainty to the sector”.

As for retrofits, this was separate from NBS’ assessment of the building, she said.

“It is usual to identify additional work and integrate it with the development of the reform plan.

“Building owners must be sure that after they comply with the mandatory national requirements, the level of compliance will not change in the short term.”

In an earlier statement, she said she first wanted to know the effects on the “building system” if it would change what was needed.

The ministry has not yet assessed these effects, although the yellow chapter appeared three years ago.

The new MBIE research says there are already effects from not making the change, such as building owners not wanting to do a seismic assessment at all.

“They want confidence that retrofit work is in line with any impending regulatory environment.

“They expect the regulations to be based on the latest knowledge,” she said.

Instead, “the eviction of businesses and government agencies from buildings contributed to this confusion”, doubling down on their health and safety duties.

In practice, Brooke said, engineers do not use the older Red Book unless legally required in situations where a building owner has to formally respond to the council. This wasn’t often the case with 80’s and 90’s buildings constructed when poor precast floors were a ubiquitous design.

“The industry makes it work fairly well, I think, in the sense that the yellow book is used for just about everything,” he said.

There are very few Red Book Building reviews.

New Zealand is considered unusual worldwide for its high proportion of commercial buildings and apartments with poor flooring – more than 60 per cent of Wellington’s commercial floor space falls into this category.

It was only after the Kaikoura earthquake that the search for how to fix it began in earnest.

Brooke and other leading researchers said in 2019 that this late start throws structural engineers “in a bad light.”

By mid-2021, the floors could be ‘too weak’ and fail in many ways resulting in the ‘split web’, the floor slab falling off its seats, as happened at the Wellington Statistics House in the Kaikoura earthquake.

Research conducted by the country’s leading project to modify such floors, ReCast Floors, at about the same time revealed key findings:

Buildings in Wellington may have undetected web cracks, reducing the load they can withstand.

The sturdy back system – a retrofit now recommended in New Zealand – has been tested by ReCast Floors researchers. Photo: ReCast Floors Research

As a result, the industry is being advised against constructing any other buildings with hollow floors – and an industry source told RNZ that the advice is being followed.

On the upside, Project ReCast thinks it has found a good retrofit fix, called the “strongback system” that it tests more.

The final results of the project are expected to be released early next year.

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