He Tohu Pūpū Seismic Design Competition

We are pleased to announce that the 4th version of the He Tohu Pūpū Seismic Design Competition will be held at the 2025 NZSEE Conference in Auckland.  

This competition sees teams of young engineers  - undergraduates, postgraduates, and/or early-career practitioners  - design and build a small-scale earthquake-resistant building that is tested on a shake table during the conference. 

(1) Attending the NZSEE 2025 conference,
(2) Creating or joining a team of up to 4 people, 
(3) Designing and building a scale building model, and 
(4) Testing your model at the conference. 

Teams will have an opportunity at the breakfast session held on the morning of the competition to present their model 3-5 minutes. This is a chance to pitch the architectural and innovative aspects of the design to score more points.

The first placed team will win a cash prize to be shared amongst team members, plus one year of complimentary membership to NZSEE for each team member. Further details to follow. 

To sign up your team, please provide all team names and affiliations by email to Kieran Haymes (kieran.haymes@canterbury.ac.nz). Queries may also be sent to this address.

We look forward to hearing from this year’s passionate young engineers, 

He Tohu Pūpū Seismic Design Competition Committee 2025