Citation on the award of Life Membership, April 2025
Helen Ferner has a long and distinguished career in Earthquake Engineering and Structural Engineering, both within New Zealand and Internationally. Helen graduated with a Bachelor of Civil Engineering from the University of Canterbury in 1982 and joined NZSEE in 1983. After a period working as a structural engineer, she was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study a Masters degree at the University in California Berkeley in 1986. She then worked at Rutherford+Chekene, designing large institutional-type buildings including hospitals and schools. She undertook significant work strengthening many significant historic structures for clients following the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. After the Northridge earthquakes, Helen worked with the California Seismic Safety Commission to develop recommendations for changes to their design codes based on the lessons learned from building performance in the earthquake.
Helen returned to New Zealand in late 1994, where she worked as a Structural Engineer for Beca, becoming a Technical Director. Helen has extensive experience in structural design and earthquake engineering, where she has been a strong advocate for good design practice and resilient structural designs that go beyond a code minimum. This desire to move the profession forward and encourage increased resilience had also been demonstrated through her leadership of the NZSEE-led Resilient Buildings Project funded by Natural Hazards Commission Toka Tū Ake. This award-winning project developed an evidence-base for the disparity between societal expectations and conventional seismic performance objectives within our building codes. This project has provided NZSEE with the opportunity to take a national leadership role in rethinking the framework for New Zealand’s earthquake standards and design approach going forward, and specific aspects of the findings of this project have been cited in numerous Government documents.
Helen has contributed significantly to the earthquake engineering profession and to NZSEE specifically. She was part of the NZSEE 2016 reconnaissance team after the Kumamoto earthquake and has published papers in the Bulletin and presented at NZSEE conferences over many years. Her skills obtained internationally from earthquake reconnaissance, assessment, and retrofit were applied domestically following the 2010-2011 Canterbury Earthquakes and the 2016 Kaikōura Earthquake.
Helen joined the NZSEE Management Committee in 2018 after acting as the Conference Convenor for NZSEE’s 50th anniversary Technical Conference in Auckland in 2018. Helen was appointed President-Elect of NZSEE in 2019, joining the Executive Team and taking over as President in April 2020.
Helen shepherded the society through the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, leading the transition of the 2020 conference into a webinar series, and developing contingency plans for both the 2021 and 2022 NZSEE conferences. These years were especially stressful, challenging, and administratively burdensome, and Helen made significant personal sacrifices to ensure the success and prosperity of the Society through this extremely challenging period.
Helen is driven to bring diversified views and input to the growth of the Society and has been a keen advocate in keeping women engaged in NZSEE. Helen has also been a strong mentor and role model for young female engineers, undertaking informal mentoring roles for young structural engineers. Helen also led the development of the Women Leaders in Earthquake Engineering award to recognise and encourage early-to-mid career women.
Through her service to the profession as a structural engineer, and through her significant service to NZSEE, Helen is conferred Life Membership of the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering.
