What a winter day out on the water! Last week Structus team celebrated “Structus day” and office move with a sailing cruise around the Hauraki Gulf. Weather conditions were simply perfect for sailing. A well deserved afternoon break after busy first half of the year.
Structus is proud to have provided structural and civil engineering services for the iconic Hub project at Unitec’s Mt Albert campus. This project recently won gold at the New Zealand Commercial Project Awards and a merit award at the Property Council Awards. The Hub is a landmark project that represents a focal point for the campus. The design includes striking features, such as two levels of ‘floating’ mezzanines with steel collar joint sway frames, the columns extending up as ‘trees’ to support a stunning ply braced Glulam diagrid roof structure. Other features include 5m cantilevered ‘wing’ walls with complex steelwork to form the angular shapes, and coordination with the existing structure, including complex movement joints and extensive strengthening structures, as the new structure oversails and integrates with the existing structures. The Construction Engineering and Trades (CET) project, with Structus providing structural and civil engineering services, also won a merit award at the Property Council Awards. This project presented different challenges, largely around the significant retaining, infrastructure and ground works on a demanding site. The CET building recently featured on TVNZ’s ‘Design Junkies’ show.
Gold Winner – Master Builders New Zealand Commercial Project Awards (See link below)
Stride Holdings Ltd has recently completed their latest industrial development Project Diego at 25 O’Rorke Rd, Penrose. Structus Consulting completed structural engineering design and construction observation for the new building. The development consists of a 9,000m2 high specification warehouse with three 2 storey high quality offices. The main structural engineering challenge on this project was the constricted site, which necessitated considerable underpinning to surrounding structures and clear advice from Structus on the associated construction methodology. Structus worked closely with Stride and the lead contractor, Macrennie, to help deliver a successful project.
Link to the project – 25 O’Rorke Road, Penrose
The following video demonstrates the benefits of allowing pallet racking to “rock” under earthquake loading. Two models were created in SAP2000, one with a traditional fixed base and the other free to rock. A nonlinear Time History Analysis was undertaken on the frames in order to compare the response of the frames.
Structus has employed student interns in the past as part of our commitment to develop young engineers as high performing professionals. We used this opportunity to create physical structural models for testing in our office. The purpose of this testing was to compare the theoretical software modelling with actual structural performance, under various configurations and loading conditions. We used icepop sticks, glue and string to create various bridge structure models and tested these under load. The student first created theoretical bridge models with our software, and then the corresponding physical bridge models, under guidance from our senior engineers. The testing to destruction proved entertaining, informative and in most cases comparable to the theoretical modelling.
This video highlights a small selection of the projects we’ve been working on. Watch video
Structus has recently completed the design and construction observation of the new automated racking system for DB Breweries.
The installation consisted of two 30m long x 12m high fully automated racks supplied by Safer Storage Systems and installed by Pallet Racking Solutions.
Structus worked closely with Mecalux Spain and the automation engineers at Daifuku BCS to accommodate the strict performance requirements and tolerances required for the cranes.
Structus continues to deliver the structural engineering services on many multi storey racking projects every month complying with the New Zealand building regulations.