THE WONDER PROJECT - November 2018
The Wonder Project is Engineering New Zealand’s free programme for schools, designed to get young Kiwis excited about science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). It partners teachers with STEM professionals around New Zealand. There are three streams – one for years 5-8, one for years 9-10 and the last for years 11-13.
Our draughting manager, Chris Avery, heard about the project and decided to get involved as a way to give back to the community and profession. He worked with year 4 & 5 students at Prospect school in West Auckland. This involved helping them to design and build a water rocket, teaching them about Newton’s laws, the engineering design process and working as a team.
This turned into a class and then a school competition – which the kids really enjoyed and got into.
Chris observed that a lot of the kids had very little awareness of jobs in STEM fields so spent time with them researching roles. He spent one hour per week at the school for eight weeks, working through the pre-designated modules. A Maori engineer joined the school to conduct one of the sessions in Maori.
Chris describes this as a well-set up and tested course that he’d love to be involved with again.
SDL SITE VISIT - BUILDING 405 - October 2018
The construction of the new Building 405 at the University of Auckland has recently reached roof Level (Level 12). To celebrate the achievement of this milestone, the majority of our design team made the short hop from our Parnell office to the Grafton Road site on a sunny October Friday afternoon, to see what has been a fairly long term design project for many of our engineers and drafts-people.
Hawkins are the main contractor on the project, and several of their staff gave us a guided tour of the building. It was rewarding to see the size and scope of the structure we designed and the speed at which it’s gone up. The clean safe site that Hawkins run, really shows off the structural design.
The seismic bracing system and the large 500mm square steel columns are very impressive to see. The exposed steel pinned connections have made construction faster and complement the appearance of the structure. Hawkins have begun installing the rooftop plantroom steelwork, and the Jasmax feature curtain wall is being installed at the lower levels.
It’s all looking very flash and gives the University of Auckland engineering students a great new facility to move into near the end of 2019.
