Citation on the award of Life Membership, April 2023
Emeritus Professor Andrew (Andy) Buchanan has had an illustrious career full of telling contributions in structural, earthquake and fire engineering. After his postgraduate studies in USA (UC Berkeley) and Canada (University of British Columbia), Dr Buchanan began his career as a consulting engineer in Christchurch before joining as an academic at his alma mater University of Canterbury, where he taught several subjects covering key aspects of timber/structural/earthquake/fire engineering to more than a thousand students. He served as the Head of the Civil Engineering Department at University of Canterbury from 2000 to 2004, during which period he played a crucial role in shaping the career of many prominent earthquake engineers and researchers.
Andy’s work in the field of timber, earthquake and fire engineering converted cutting edge research results into industry solutions. Andy is one of the pioneers of modern timber construction in NZ and led the development of innovative structural timber building systems, using post-tensioned large spans in single storey and multi-storey timber buildings. Andy authored the New Zealand Timber Design Guide in addition to writing a seminal book on Structural Design for Fire Safety.
Andy is the co-inventor of the Press Lam Technology, for which he was conferred the Kiwi Net Award. He also played a leading role in the development and testing of plywood shear walls for use in NZ. He managed to convince the timber industry stakeholders that timber structures can be designed to satisfy the desired level of safety and resilience. To develop innovative products using his noble ideas, Andy led the establishment of an industry consortium called Structural Timber Innovation Company Ltd (STIC), for which he served as the Research Director.
Andy is a past-President of the New Zealand Timber Design Society. Andy is a Distinguished Fellow of the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand (IPENZ), and he is also a Fellow of the NZSEE and the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE). Even after his retirement, Andy has been active in commercialisation of the new timber building products developed by his team into the NZ and global markets.
Andy led a vision of building safe multi-story buildings using renewable resources. His pioneering research at the University of Canterbury and STIC initiated a step-change in the perception of structural timber, allowing direct competition with concrete and steel for large span and multi-storey buildings, for the first time. Andy’s research and leadership lifted engineered timber buildings into serious contention for the Christchurch rebuild after the devastating Canterbury earthquake sequence in 2010-2011.
All the above mentioned achievements make Andy a worthy recipient of Life Membership of the New Zealand Society of Earthquake Engineering
