Description

The Engineering Assessment Guidelines (the guidelines) provide a technical basis for engineers to carry out seismic assessments of existing buildings within New Zealand. The guidelines support seismic assessments for a range of purposes, and must be used by territorial authorities to decide whether or not a building is earthquake prone in terms of the Building Act 2004.

Scope

The guidelines provide methods for two levels of assessment. Initial Seismic Assessment (ISA) provides a broad indication of the likely level of seismic performance of a building. In some cases, an ISA will be followed by a more comprehensive Detailed Seismic Assessment (DSA).

Both assessment methods rate a building as a percentage of the new building standard applied to an equivalent new building on the same site. For assessment purposes, new building standard refers to the minimum life safety performance requirements of Building Code clause B1 – Structure.