Technical Data
North Island Geological Inventory
The draft report and project overview is available to be downloaded. The AQA Technical Committee have been involved in the work for the past 12 months as an integral part of the Project Advisory Committee and will continue to be be involved for the next stages of the project.
Feedback from members is welcomed and will be tabled and discussed with respect to the next stages of the project.
North Island Geological Inventory
Quality Assurance of Aggregates for Roads
This is a Roading NZ guideline produced in conjunction with AQA and NZTA.
Download Roading NZ Guidelines
Technical Committee Update—October 2009
First, let me take the opportunity to thank both the AQA Executive and Winstone Aggregates in understanding and supporting my reasoning behind stepping down as Vice President. I did not take the decision lightly and strongly believe the AQA will benefit from the changes.
For those not aware, I am undertaking some postgraduate research primarily centred on sand equivalent and clay index tests. I am hoping that the work will identify areas where our materials are currently being unreasonably judged and open opportunities for greater understanding and utilisation of local aggregates. I have already presented some preliminary findings at the concrete conference in October, these were well received, and that industry has signalled their support.
It was pleasing to see at that conference, the acknowledgement of the importance of aggregates, the session I presented in was exclusively about aggregates and in another session James Boyce was invited to talk about the AQA.
Elsewhere, the technical committee has been busy progressing the key strategies and we met again on 20 October. We have made good progress on working with the others, Greg Arnold and I attended a meeting with NZTA and Opus regarding carbonation. This will be a relatively small project owned by NZTA, but great that AQA were invited along for input.
You should all have received the first publication of work from the FRST project that we are involved in with the University of Auckland and Roading NZ. I think Prof. Philippa Black has produced a great document and she is now busy working on the next instalment covering the South Island. If you have not seen it yet, then it is available for download from the AQA website and worth checking out.
The pilot study on developing a PSV Dbase has nearly been completed and next steps will likely be to review with Roading NZ and NZTA, after which we will be sending out a spreadsheet for members to complete to enable inclusion in the database.
This DBase should provide a great tool for Engineers and Specifiers and highlight the proactive stance our industry is taking in trying to get up to date and detailed information to the people who need it.
If you have any comments or questions please get in touch technical@aqa.org.nz
Jason Lowe
Chair AQA Technical Committee
Technical Committee Terms of Reference.
Technical Committee 5 Year Plan
Technical Committee Update March 2009
Technical Committee Update 2008