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In this episode of Stirring the Pot, we’re having a kōrero with Dr Charles Clifton, the civil engineer who spent four decades turning structural steel from a forgotten material into New Zealand’s construction standard
In this episode of Stirring the Pot, Humans of Steel edition, we’re having a kōrero (conversation) with Dr Charles Clifton, the civil engineer who started HERA’s structural steel division in 1983 and has spent more than four decades reshaping how New Zealand builds with steel.
Charles grew up on a farm in southern Hawke’s Bay, the son of an army engineer, before studying civil engineering at the University of Canterbury and designing buildings in England. He came home to take on HERA’s newly formed structural division at a time when structural steel had effectively zero market share in New Zealand’s multi storey buildings.
In this conversation, Charles walks through what it actually took to change that story. Why steel’s reputation for poor earthquake and fire performance was only partly deserved, and what it took to prove it. How he adapted capacity design principles from New Zealand’s concrete research to make steel earthquake resilient. Why he had to build a durability design method from scratch when no one else had one, a method Australia later adopted for its own steel industry. And what he found when he investigated the World Trade Center collapse to separate the physics from the fear.
Perseverance, both his and the industry’s, is what turned steel from a fringe material into the dominant choice for multi storey construction in New Zealand.
Interview conducted by HERA
Resources and links
- Learn more about HERA’s Industry 4.0 rangahau: https://hera.org.nz/research/industry-x-0/
- Subscribe to our podcast: https://www.hera.org.nz/podcasts/
📬 Got questions or feedback? Reach us at info@hera.org.nz
