The building is located on The Terrace in the heart of Wellington's CBD. Photo / Kasharn Rao.
The building is located on The Terrace in the heart of Wellington's CBD. Photo / Kasharn Rao.
Two Government departments are moving out of their building in Wellington after an assessment indicated it is earthquake prone.
Between them, The Ministry for Women and the Ministry of Education lease four floors of the nine-storey building at number 22 The Terrace, also known as Qual IT House.
Subsequent to the Christchurch earthquakes the building was rated at 90 per cent of the New Building Standard (NBS).
But a recent interim assessment found a risk to its structural integrity and that it is earthquake prone, Ministry of Education business enablement and support deputy secretary Zoe Griffiths confirmed.
For a building to be considered earthquake prone it has to be rated at less than 34 per cent NBS.
Neither the building owner, Stride Property Group, or the ministries would disclose the building's exact new NBS rating.
However, Griffiths said it was low enough for the ministry to be "concerned".
"Ministry staff occupying 22 The Terrace have been informed and we are now putting our business continuity plans into place by working to relocate our people to other Wellington region offices, providing opportunities to work from home and supporting flexible working arrangements", she said.
Parts of Bowen House are also being vacated so the building can be strengthened. Photo / Mark Mitchell.
Staff at the Ministry for Women would move to temporary accommodation tomorrow and the ministry would be "considering long-term options to ensure it manages the health and safety of its staff", a spokesperson confirmed.
Stride has met with all tenants in the building and it's understood the two ministries are the only ones planning to move.
New rules around building assessments and several leases due for renewal prompted a fresh engineering report into the building, Stride chief executive Philip Littlewood said.
"We were looking at the opportunity to refurbish the property and we were looking at seismic [resilience] as a part of that process just to double check whether any works were required", he said.
Design work to strengthen the building is underway, including an option to strengthen it beyond 100 per cent NBS, and spades are expected to hit the ground within a couple of months.
Those affected at the ministries are not the only ones working in the realm of Government being moved around because of seismic concerns.
Just down the road, parts of Bowen House are being vacated so it can be strengthened. The building is home to party leaders, MPs and parliamentary support staff.
This is after it was assessed against new guidelines being proposed by the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment following the partial collapse of two floors in Statistics House in the 2016 Kaikoura Earthquake.
They're the same guidelines the capital's now-closed central library was tested against.
These guidelines, known as the "Yellow Chapter", are not yet part of legislation and cannot be used to determine whether a building is earthquake prone.
That's because MBIE is still in the process of gathering evidence and feedback on them.
But it's difficult to ignore findings under the guidelines when they have a dramatic effect on the numbers.
Technically the central library has a NBS rating of 60 per cent but engineers calculated that could drop as low as 15 per cent when taking the guidelines into consideration.
Littlewood said the "Yellow Book" created a grey area but Stride would certainly take it into consideration in future design work for 22 The Terrace.
"Clearly you don't want to go and spend a whole lot of money on an asset and then suddenly the rules change … it's an uncertain time for a number of landlords about which rules to follow."
