WHEN I JOINED BRANZ in 1974, it was housed in an elderly office building in Wellington. The only piece of electronic equipment was a printing calculator – but we did have five librarians in a staff of 50.
Crude but effective
Some of our early attempts at assessing the performance of building materials in the New Zealand environment appeared crude. Dr John Duncan had the task of determining the corrosivity of the environment to metals, notably galvanised steel.
The main corroding agent was sea salt, so John found some Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) research into sodium levels in grass. He reasoned that sodium was part of sea salt, so he used the DSIR results to draw up the first corrosivity contours for New Zealand.
This was looked at rather dubiously by industry, but measurements of salt deposition levels later showed that his original contours were fairly good.
Trumping the Brits
Following the move to Judgeford in the late 1970s, my next research was on the effect of replacing asbestos fibres in asbestos cement with cellulose fibres derived from wood pulp.
Asbestos cement sheet was widely used as a building material, but health concerns meant a new fibre had to be found. That search led to us finding a 1946 scientific paper from the UK on the ageing and weathering of asbestos cement.
We replicated some of the accelerated ageing techniques in the lab as well as naturally weathering some cellulose fibre cement sheet. It was very satisfying 2 years later to present our findings to an international conference in Sheffield and find that we had trumped the European researchers.
I went on to research the ageing of PVC. Part of this required a luckless technician carrying out impact tests in a climate-controlled room at -20°C. Interesting times.
A move to management
In 1988, I moved into management. My personal philosophy has been that it is not enough to carry out the research, but it must be useful and able to be applied. It’s definitely the way BRANZ works.
As a manager, it was very fulfilling to recruit young scientists and engineers and see them grow with experience. Quite a few are now filling middle management roles at BRANZ.
My final 10 years were a new direction again, involving industry liaison, development and weathertightness. I was a foundation board member of the New Zealand Green Building Council and PrefabNZ and really enjoyed helping get these fledgling organisations off the ground.
BRANZ supports better buildings
When I applied for the position at BRANZ in 1974, I wanted to be part of an organisation that was directly useful to New Zealand. BRANZ has certainly been that, and I have thoroughly enjoyed being part of it.
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