The Past has Shaped Our Current Building Code - The Future Can Improve It

“The earthquake struck just before 11 a.m. with a heaving and shaking of the earth beneath our once familiar school, which had now become a place of fierce, uncontrollable and terrifying force. The shaking was violent from side to side while, at the same time, you were aware of being pushed upwards. We were all stunned into silence until a girl called Gwen shouted “Earthquake!” That released us. We tore, we scrambled, we rushed to the door...

Norma Wing, 1931 Napier earthquake

In 1931 when Norma Wing experienced the Napier Earthquake as a student at Hastings Street Primary school, the pupils and teachers ran outside - as did so many other Hawkes Bay citizens. In the township, many of the deaths were caused by fallen parapets and ornamental features as people rushed out through the doorways onto the street (McGregor, 1998). Some of the greatest tragedies occurred as a result of collapsed masonry buildings - brick being the deadliest of materials in an earthquake.

Earthquakes create and shape the building code

The 1931 earthquake was the first major scale earthquake in New Zealand. With at least 236 deaths it remains the worst civil disaster to occur in our country. At the time, most of the buildings were constructed in brick, like the city buildings of the UK.

Following the earthquake, it was recognised that brick was not suited to the NZ landscape, with it’s high risk of seismic activity. Timber construction became more popular, and in fact the Napier earthquake is the reason that the majority of State houses were constructed in wood.

The Napier earthquake led to the development of guidelines by the Buildings Regulations Committee to to ensure the new buildings were safer; their recommendations were the forerunner of the building codes now used throughout New Zealand. As such, the NZ building code is built on history and experience. It has captured the learnings from the past so we don’t make the same mistakes again. 

Purpose becomes buried in complexity

However, we are at the point where the purpose of the code now gets buried in its complexity. As we try to meet the requirements for consent, as we tick the boxes along the way and respond to various RFIs, Peer Reviews, CANs and design changes, we no longer focus on the why. Compliance with the code becomes the main goal, obscuring the original purpose to help us build safer, healthier, better performing buildings.

In the case where a benefit is obvious, such as the use of a fire escape, it’s easy to understand why it might be in the building code, and therefore people are happy to include it. As the design requirements become less connected to the risk, it’s harder for the compliance to be understood and followed. Using the correct edge detail in a grid and tile ceiling to ensure its safety in an earthquake might be obvious to an engineer but not so much to everyone else!

Understanding is Key to Implementation

I’m reminded of the story of the stone cutter (you can read it in better detail here). Essentially there are three stonecutters working on the Salisbury Cathedral. When asked about their work, the first two respond briefly that they are cutting stones. The third stone cutter looks to the sky and describes the grandeur of the cathedral he is working on, and the importance of his part in and the value it will bring to people in the future. He is fully invested in his work and gains greater satisfaction from it as a result.

Similarly, for building compliance, if people understand the big picture and have a way to comply, they will. We have an excellent performance-based building code that incorporates valuable lessons from the past, but the true value of the code is currently obscured by the complicated ways in which compliance must be gained. It’s hard to see the wood for the trees.

Tools such as Prenguin provide a pathway for people to get back to designing for performance first, and compliance second. Perhaps the future of the building code sits with technology, and the ability to provide more informative data so that we don’t get lost in the compliance brambles. Instead we can cast our eyes upwards for a view of the greater goal and make the decisions that build better buildings, with building consent being a side effect.

(story source: https://www.massey.ac.nz/ https://bit.ly/napiereqstories)