Cameron says the most fun part of the job is designing ways to test the strength of objects and breaking very strong things.
Clients want to be sure that materials meet standards. Different standards, including from Australia / New Zealand, the USA, and international ISO standards, mean seemingly indestructible materials are not just tested for strength and load capacity, but measured for elasticity and stretch capacity.
Much of the pair’s time is spent verifying overseas certificates. Samples from batches of overseas-certified steel often arrive in the workshop, with the client wanting to be sure these are up to scratch.
Generally, higher grades of steel are used in New Zealand for earthquake design reasons. In our shaky isles, NZTA’s Bridge Manual can set even higher seismic expectations than the reinforced concrete building standard.
“We have pieces of steel in the workshop that would take 1,000 tonnes to break at full size. We cut, or core, these into smaller pieces to test, giving real-life data on their breaking point,” says Cameron.
“When it comes to steel, the more assumptions engineers make at the design stage, the larger the safety margins - and the higher the cost. By providing real‑world test results, we help reduce uncertainty, refine design calculations, and ultimately lower costs without compromising safety.”
With such tremendous forces and heavy machinery at work, health and safety stays top of mind. Cameron and Michael are kept safe behind specially designed safety enclosures, with sensors set to shut it all down if things get out of hand.
When they’re not in the workshop, the pair are processing reams of data, creating graphs, and producing test reports.
Ultimately, they say, pushing materials to their structural limits in WSP’s Petone research facility is about certainty. Because breaking things in the lab is how resilience, safety, and trust are built into the essential structures that Kiwis use and rely on, day in, day out.
