Services

Our dedicated design team utilise the latest technology including AutoCAD and 3D BIM modelling software, to provide multi discipline, coordinated building services solutions that are tailored for our clients needs and ensuring compliance with all Territorial Authorities and NZ’s Building Regulation requirements.

• We also assist with Building Consent Compliance issues, working with Clients, Councils and Contractors to advise, mediate and progress in achieving Building Compliance issue resolution.
• Our Building Services Engineering practice is supported by our Professional Indemnity Policy and Professional Industry Associations, covering all aspects of the relevant NZ Building Code is association with our Industry Partnerships with other specialist Engineering Consultants.

We’re easy to work with and here to help you!

• Workshop facilities complete with gas appliance servicing bay, PPR and plastic welding technology, Fusiotherm tools, and an extensive stock of regularly used components and consumables as part of providing 24hr customer support.
• Specialised commissioning and environmental monitoring equipment including air-quality and oxygen depletion sensors, refrigerant recovery pumps, gas leak detection and combustion efficiency analysers, CCTV cameras, noise meters, and a range of temperature, air, and water flow measuring equipment for ensuring territorial authority compliance.

Technology in Seismically restrain building services is compulsory

The New Zealand Building Code clause B1 - Structure requires that both structural and nonstructural building elements remain stable under imposed loads such as those caused by earthquakes, as poorly restrained engineering systems within buildings, including building services, could be a potential hazard for occupants during an earthquake and leave the building unusable and unsafe afterwards.

New Zealand Standard NZS 4219 sets the seismic performance of seismic bracings and provides a means of compliance with the NZ building code requirements for building services such as:

• Ventilation or A/C ducting
• Piping systems, including those for hot and cold water supply
• Water tanks and vessels
• Components suspended from the building structure (floor slab or roof structure)

While New Zealand Building Codes provide acceptable solutions for seismic restraints of building services until a certain size, like water heaters up to 360 litre capacity, for all cases not covered by Codes & Standards, a special design compliant with NZS 4219 is required.

Achieving the most suitable compliant and convenient solutions depends on location and kind of structural building elements around the building service to be used as an anchorage and therefore our work is also to identify most suitable structural element to carry the estimated seismic loads, which is sometimes not evident in old constructions where no information for structural is available.

Therefore, we rely on our experience and possible investigation to make a selection of building elements depending on the solution of structural bracing to achieve.

We use 3D models to develop this solution and produce possible drawings for workshop & installation and report on load estimates and compliance with NZ Codes and Standards.

We also check if capacities of service like water storage tanks are oversized to the NZ Standards & Codes, as the bigger the capacity, the higher the seismic loads, and then the more expensive is the structure.

This was the case in a recent project in Wellington where existing cold water storage on top of the building of 4 x 3,000 litre has been reduced to 4 x 1,000 litre, which according to our estimate was still suitable to serve 50 units.

This reduction allowed the use of smaller tanks involving lower seismic loads on the building, so increasing its resilience and allowing to fit new seismic bracings into the allocated service space without requiring any building alteration.