SEISMIC RESILIENCE JARED KEEN – TECHNICAL DIRECTOR; HAMISH MCCORMICK – ASSOCIATE; JASIN LONG – ASSOCIATE, BECA, NEW ZEALAND
Recent developments in seismic resilience
Since the Christchurch earthquake in 2011, New Zealand has been on a journey to improve the seismic resilience of its hospital building stock. Here, Jared Keen, technical director – seismic and structural engineering, Hamish McCormick, associate – structural engineer, and Jasin Long, associate – seismic restraint engineer, all of Beca, New Zealand, present a summary of key advances in hospital seismic resilience.
Within engineering circles, there is a well- established understanding of seismic risk in New Zealand, with robust seismic design standards dating back to the 1960s forming a significant part of the building code. However, it was not until the major earthquakes of the Canterbury sequence (2010-11) and Kaikoura (2016) that the consequences of earthquakes on the built environment became firmly entrenched in the minds of the public – and of health facility mangers. The consequences of these events
have led to significant developments in the seismic design of new hospitals and the assessment of existing facilities. These developments can be broadly categorised into four areas: l Assessment of existing structures. l Assessment of existing non-structural elements.
l Design of new structures. l Design of new non-structural elements.
Assessment of existing structures The assessment of existing structures in New Zealand is covered by The Seismic
Assessment of Existing Buildings guidelines, which are widely used, and feed into the legislative requirements for earthquake prone buildings as given in New Zealand’s Building Act. Generally speaking, hospitals have high
rates of assessment due to the efforts of professionalised facility management teams and the requirement for these buildings to be functional in a post- disaster situation. Much of New Zealand’s original
hospital stock was built prior to modern seismic design standards, making their assessment even more critical. The status of these assessments was captured in the report by Kestrel Group – Understanding and Improving the Seismic Resilience of Hospital Buildings (June 2022).1
It found Jared Keen Hamish McCormick Jasin Long
•Jared Keen is a structural engineering technical director at Beca, and Beca’s global seismic lead. He has extensive experience working with some the world’s leading architectural practices on large scale, complex projects. Most recently Jared has led the design of a number of key Christchurch Rebuild projects and provides advice nationally and internationally to improve the seismic resilience of buildings. He has led the seismic assessment of numerous hospital facilities in New Zealand, as well as the seismic design of non-structural elements in major new hospital and laboratories facilities. He is currently co-authoring the New Zealand hospital seismic design guidelines. •Hamish McCormick is an associate structural engineer with over 10 years’ experience from Beca’s Christchurch office. His recent focus has been on the specialised sectors of health care facilities and seismic assessments. Hamish is a keen advocate for visual communication, often transforming complex engineering concepts and topics like seismic risk and resilience, into digestible sketches and images. His recent projects include leading the structural design for the Hillmorton Adult Acute Facility and being a key contributor to the engineering design and assessment in the Nelson Hospital Redevelopment. •Jasin Long is an associate seismic restraint engineer in the Beca Southern Structures team. He has specialised experience in both the seismic restraint design and analysis of non-structural elements including, industrial equipment, building services, ceilings and non-load bearing partitions. Jasin joined Beca in 2022 and is now the Southern Regional lead for our Building Seismic Restraint (BSR) team, where we have focused on delivering BSR as a specialist service to our clients and the industry. He is involved in a number of high profile hospital project including the New Dunedin Hospital Inpatients and Outpatients buildings, the Hillmorton Adult Acute Facility and the Christchurch Hospital – Waipapa Tower 3 upgrade.
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that the completeness of these assessments varied considerably between (former) DHBs. The NZ Health Infrastructure Unit (HIU) maintains a database of seismic assessment results from the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs), which was reported in the Ministry’s June 2020 Current State Assessment report and has since been further updated. This information is necessarily high-level due to the number of assets – which has meant that key indicators such as building typology, assessment type (IEP, ISA, DSA), and date of assessment, are not recorded. The establishment of Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand in 2022 has facilitated a more centralised view of these national assets and allowed for a more focused prioritisation process. This has coincided with the release of the Seismic Resilience of Hospital Buildings report. This 2022 report provides an update of
overall seismic assessment numbers, broken down by regions of seismic hazard (see Table 1). The Seismic Resilience of Hospital Buildings report also clearly articulates
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