Skip to main content.

Related markets

Open

Related services

Open

< previous next >

New Zealand Parliament Buildings

The refurbishment of the Parliamentary complex comprised Parliament Buildings and the General Assembly Library. Additional work involved new underground carparking and service areas.

Holmes Consulting Group provided all the structural engineering services for the refurbishment, base isolation and strengthening of these buildings. These old buildings required special care to protect their brittle nature from untoward settlements or movements during the foundation modification process.

As with all retro-fitting projects, it is most important that the end result is a high quality retro-fit with no real sign of the engineers 'footprints' being left all over the building.

This was a very large project on a world scale for its type and has been used as a benchmark project for other offshore consultants, particularly the USA, to work up their own base isolation methodologies. Construction was completed in 1994. We were awarded an ACENZ Gold Medal by our peers for this project. The buildings have a Category One listing by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust.

  • Parliament Buildings: The existing buildings were base isolated to protect against earthquakes.
  • Parliament Buildings: This project represents the largest seismic retrofit in the world with a project cost of $ 170 million.
  • Parliament Buildings: State-of-the-art time history computer analyses were required to effectively model all seismic building responses.
  • Parliament Buildings: There were special conservation considerations in the retroffit of these Class A historic buildings.
  • Parliament Buildings: This project won an ACENZ gold award and the IPENZ Engineering Excellence award.