Items filtered by date: Tuesday, 02 December 2014

Michael Heron’s Passion Project A love of what the digital world could offer those seeking justice and a successful digital entrepreneur living next door have inspired former Solicitor General Michael Heron QC to set up an online dispute resolution service that can provide great access to experts in the dispute resolution area.

Mr Heron, who resigned as Solicitor General last year, was excited by the ability to combine legal collaboration with digital delivery when he worked as the Crown’s senior legal officer.

“Primarily, I wanted to do something to address the problem of access to justice that is much talked about. In particular, a collaborative digital offering has the potential to offer fast, effective dispute resolution in a more cost effective way, he told LawFuel.

He said his time at Crown Law demonstrated the potential to harness the power of collaboration, such as with the Government Legal Network which provides a collaboration of government lawyers, together with a digital business that fascinated him.

The result is Complete Online Dispute Resolution (CODR), which provides parties in dispute with the ability to gain online access to a growing list of arbitrators and mediators to facilitate a cost effective and speedy resolution.

Source: LawFuel

New Zealand’s home builder Lite Green Projects is collaborating with Melbourne, Australia-based modular builder Habitech Systems to deliver super-insulated modular houses across the Tasman District, an area at the northern end of South Island of New Zealand.

Andrei Martin of Lite Green said Habitech’s panel system provides high performance energy efficiencies and construction methods that reduce build time. He hopes the Habitech system will catch on in New Zealand because it is more economical than most sustainable and eco-friendly homes, as architectureanddesign.com.au tells MHProNews.

Remembering the earthquake that devastated Christchurch, New Zealand in 2011, Habitech wants to demonstrate to New Zealand builders that it’s possible build new homes that are not only earthquake resistive, but also affordable, attractive and sustainable.

Of particular interest to Chrischurch residents is that the Habitech wall panels have been proven to have 800 percent more bearing capacity, 580 per cent of the bending strength and 200 per cent of the bending stiffness of traditional framed construction.

Source:  MHproNews

Air New Zealand’s Grabaseat is poised to launch its biggest fare sale yet, offering one thousand $10 seats across all domestic routes operated on Air New Zealand’s network to celebrate 10 years of the Grabaseat website.

The promotion also includes thousands of cut-rate fares for international destinations and thousands within the country for less than $39.

General Manager Market Development and Retail Sales at Air New Zealand Annabelle Fowler says Grabaseat has experienced phenomenal growth since its creation in 2006 with over 28,000 people visiting the site on average each day.

“Customers have taken up more than 1.8 million Greenlight Deals over the past 10 years, covering some 840 million kilometres. That’s equivalent to more than 1,000 return trips to the moon or 23,000 return trips between Auckland and London.

“The spontaneity of Grabaseat resonates with people. We’ve had seats sell out in minutes and know the deals have inspired thousands of impromptu getaways and have given many people the chance to see more of family and friends.”

Earlier this week Grabaseat took to the streets to celebrate its milestone birthday, planting a supersized cake in Auckland’s Takutai Square in Britomart where punters could burrow for birthday surprises including return international and domestic flights for two.

Grabaseat is famous for its inventive promotions, previously pranking customers on April Fools’ Day with its ‘grab a seat’ deal where the website advertised actual furniture including cane chairs and ski lifts, ‘Septemperature’ where Grabaseat fares were determined by local temperatures during September last year, and offering a range of themed packages with flights as low as $1.

Source: An Air New Zealand press release July 15, 2016

Hawkes Bay institutions anticipate port ship mechanical services demand

Napier, MSCNewsWire, Thursday 14 July 2016 - Two historic pillars of the Hawkes Bay economy are evaluating a joint approach in developing Napier as a focus for ship repair in the South Seas. They are the Port of Napier itself and Napier Engineering and Contracting whose 150 year history has been closely linked to the progress of the port.

Napier Engineering is the east coast’s major heavy engineer and in association with the port undertakes vessel repairs while the ships are wharfside. The company specialises in rapid deployment repairs begun and completed while vessels are loading/discharging. Last month such repairs were carried out on the French-owned container vessel Lavender. In recent months the company overhauled the safety systems of the United States Scripps Institution research vessel Roger Revell (pictured).

The joint evaluation in promoting the port for repairs follows a study by Napier Engineering’s management indicating that European trade re-alignments in the medium and long term will be to the benefit of the Hawkes Bay region (see current article.) Another factor considered in this was the pending US-led Trans Pacific Partnership trade treaty.

Such a repositioned alignment pivoting on New Zealand offers greater opportunities for South Pacific ship repairers simply because Asian routes are already well-supplied with transit repair dock workshops.

Portside repairs on cargo vessels during voyages are required when heavy seas have damaged ships- own- gear and other superstructures. Also when vessels have sustained grab or crane loading damage to cargo hatches and coamings.

According to Napier Engineering management the immediate scheme was to alert vessel owners, charterers, and shipping agents of the port’s advantages in rapid-turnaround repairs on voyage.

Liner service operators and management would benefit by being informed of the rapid turnaround voyage repairs that could be performed at Napier with no interruption to their schedule.

Tramp vessel management operating vessels on an on-demand non-scheduled basis would similarly profit through using Port of Napier in that rapid repairs were available there as an addition to the numerous other benefits of using the port.

Napier Engineering said it would now re-position its ship repair business to what it described as a “priority” divisional activity.

During the heyday of Commonwealth Preference trade between New Zealand and Britain, Napier Engineering specialised in servicing the conference lines of that era by deploying its mechanical specialists at the Napier port of call. They would remain on the vessel until the contract was completed and then disembarked at the next port of call – wherever it was.

The company is the leading New Zealand precision production engineer in food processing equipment, notably of the Niven Series.Port of Napier which is municipally-owned within Hawkes Bay traces its history back to 1855.

From the MSCNewsWire reporters' deskThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Thermo Fisher Scientific and DuPont Nutrition & Health have announced three new distribution agreements for the DuPont BAX System Q7, covering the regions of Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and Canada.

Under the terms of the agreement for Western Europe, Thermo Fisher will retain exclusive rights to distribute the PCR-based food safety testing platform for three more years. Under separate agreements, Thermo Fisher will also continue to supply the platform in Australia and New Zealand on an exclusive basis and in Canada on a non-exclusive basis.

Financial and other details of the agreements were not disclosed.

"Thermo Fisher's office-based and in-field specialists have a long history of supporting the BAX System Q7, and the technical expertise and experience they can provide our customers in these regions is unparalleled," George McVay, diagnostics global business and integrated operations leader at DuPont Nutrition & Health, said in a statement. "We look forward to continuing our current arrangement to serve and support our food manufacturing and contract laboratory customers."

The deals renew a 14-year partnership between the partners in those regions. As reported by GenomeWeb, VWR holds exclusive distribution rights to the BAX System Q7 in the US.

Source: NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – July 13, 2016

Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) is improving access to property information following a survey ranking it among the most in-demand types of government data, says Land Information Minister Louise Upston.

The findings were included in the results of a LINZ survey published today, which asked New Zealanders about the top 10 datasets they would most like to be able to access.

“With more than 400 survey responses, this high participation confirms the importance of LINZ’s work in encouraging government agencies to release their data,” says Ms Upston.

“The results of the survey have been released to all government agencies to help them to think about the types of data they might release and the best way to go about it.”

Undertaken by the Open Government Data and Information Programme at LINZ, the survey was done to inform understanding of what types of data New Zealanders had an interest in and was promoted through a variety of digital channels including Twitter, social forums and email.

“This new, more direct, way of gathering feedback represents a shift towards encouraging more participation from the public in shaping our public services and what they deliver.”

“Releasing public data to Kiwis will ultimately lead to more efficiency, transparency and accountability,” says Ms Upston.

LINZ makes data it holds available through the LINZ Data Service. This includes property boundaries and title information.

To view the survey results please visit: https://www.ict.govt.nz/guidance-and-resources/open-government/engagement-activities/top-10-datasets-survey/

Source:  A press rease out of the Beehive

A new project to enable robots to accurately machine holes in composite aircraft components, is on track to save BAE Systems millions.A research project to enable robots to accurately machine holes in composite aircraft components, has matured into a production system and is on track to save BAE Systems millions of pounds in capital and operational costs over the coming years.

The robotic countersinking technology was developed through collaborative research, led by the AMRC and involving KUKA Systems UK. This production system has now been installed at BAE Systems in the UK, where it will be used to processes a wide range of composite components for military aircraft.

The robotic countersinking technology includes the use of multiple robots to automatically handle composite components and then countersink high tolerance pre-drilled fastener holes.

Non-contact metrology integrated with the machining robot locates predrilled holes and corrects the robot’s position before countersinking. A separate robot provides support to the component eliminating expensive holding fixtures. The system is controlled via the latest S7 Siemens programmable login controller (PLC) and includes the use of augmented reality to aid component fixturing.

Ben Morgan, head of the AMRC’s Integrated Manufacturing Group, said

The architecture of the system will allow the technology to evolve over time and embrace the ideas behind Industry 4.0. We’re now advancing the development system further, enabling process monitoring and generating ‘Big Data’. Analysis of this data, i.e. ‘Data Mining’ will provide an understanding of quality in process.

Source: CompositesToday July 13, 2016

A new workplace health and training centre has opened in Hamilton New Zealand, the first dedicated location in the region.

Vertical Horizonz provided training in the Waikato area since its beginning in 1998, with its services also provided throughout New Zealand, the Middle East, and Australia.

The centre features a large training area, two classrooms, and confined space units to train a wide range of skills including pole and rope rescue, first aid, gas testing, and construction health and safety.

Training Quality general manager Phil Hokianga said the company sought to develop a purpose built training facility in 2018 to further demonstrate what they can do, in a report by Stuff.

“This is just a temporary measure for us. We want to provide training as realistic as we have it to the environment people will be working in,” he said.

Hokianga went on to say that business had increased following changes to New Zealand’s Health and Safety Work Act. The legislation, enforced in April 2015, which heightened responsibility of all levels -from contractors to directors -to enhance the health and safety of their workplace.

More than 17,000 people were trained last year in categories from industrial safety, transport and crane, first aid, professional development, and rural operations.

Source:  Logistics&Materials Handling

July 13, 2016 - Air New Zealand has taken out World’s Best Premium Economy Class and World’s Best Premium Economy Class Airline Seat at the prestigious Skytrax World Airline Awards held at the Farnborough Air Show overnight.

July 13, 2016 - The Reserve Bank regularly reviews and refines its monetary policy decision making process to help it better handle economic uncertainty and improve the quality of policy decisions, Assistant Governor John McDermott said today.

In a speech to the Manawatu Chamber of Commerce, Dr McDermott explained the Bank’s process for formulating and assessing monetary policy. The speech does not contain any messages about upcoming monetary policy announcements.

“Each OCR decision and Monetary Policy Statement publication is complex involving many staff from across the Bank. The significant amount of background work reflects the uncertainty we face when setting monetary policy to achieve the objectives of the Policy Targets Agreement,” Dr McDermott said.

Dr McDermott said the Bank has adopted a process to help deal with this uncertainty and improve the quality of its monetary policy decisions. Two important elements are committee decision making and the regular review of the Bank’s forecasting process.

“The Bank has used committees in its monetary policy decision making for many years. Historically, their use has been most prevalent in policy discussion and advice. In 2013, the Bank maintained the advisory role of its committees, and strengthened the role of committees in making a monetary policy decision. The Governing Committee, comprising the Bank’s four governors, was established with the committee being responsible for monetary policy decisions.

“These changes mean the Bank now relies less on the single decision maker model. Making a decision by committee allows the consideration of a greater range of viewpoints.”

Dr McDermott said reviews of the Bank’s forecast performance also help to update its understanding of economic relationships, evaluate risks to the current outlook and identify areas where accuracy can be improved.

“Since the financial crisis, inflation has been weaker than forecast, and the Bank has continually reviewed its forecast performance over this period. Recent research has shown that the Bank’s forecast performance has been reasonable when compared to a number of external and model-based benchmarks. This suggests that there were no obvious major sources of new information that the Bank could have used from these benchmarks in its decision making.

“The persistent period of weaker-than-expected inflation remains a focus for the Bank, and the Bank’s research programme is shedding light on the drivers of low inflation. Increasing our understanding of low inflation is a strategic priority for the Bank.”

Read the speech

Source:  A RBNZ press release, July 13, 2016