Raising the roof with the NZMRM
Industry
Manufacturing
Products
Location
Henderson, Auckland
“The corrosion project has been going for more than 30 years and the improvements to the quality of the screws shows, with the life expectancy vastly improved as each screw manufacturer gets personalised reports on how well their products are performing.” –Garth Wyllie.
“As you might expect, such levels of payments are fully audited by an external auditors who checks every invoice and payment to ensure it is correctly accounted for.” – Wyllie.
Overview
The New Zealand Metal Roofing Manufacturers Association (NZMRM) develops and promotes industry standards and research for metal roofing and cladding. The association needed a secretariat to help in reviewing policies, initiatives and programmes and for communicating with stakeholders. For this, it turned to the EMA’s expert Advocacy and Strategy team.
The Need
The New Zealand Metal Roofing Manufacturers Association (NZMRM) represents companies that manufacture metal roofing, cladding, fascia and rainwater systems, as well as metal flashings for roof and wall cladding. It actively promotes education, which ensures the correct manufacture, handling and application of members’ products.
It’s a small association by number, with just 25 members, ranging from large corporate entities to independent family-owned businesses. The larger companies include Dimond Industries (part of the Fletcher Steel group of companies), Steel and Tube, and Metalcraft Industries (owned by United Industries), all of whom are EMA Members.
The NZMRM advocates on behalf of its members around specific issues with a high degree of focus on the technical and building requirements.
To organise its operations, the NZMRM needed a secretariat, which covers everything that an association needs done from an organisational perspective. Garth Wyllie is the latest member of the EMA’s Advocacy and Strategy team to act as its Executive Offic
The Solution
The tasks the secretariat performs for the association include organising the NZMRM’s Annual Conference and AGM, which is normally held offshore.
Wyllie, with the help of EMA Project Co-ordinator Yi New Lim, puts together the programme, the budget and organises the sponsorships for that event as well as working with a conference committee around the content.
In addition, the EMA’s Manager Employment Relations & Safety, Paul Jarvie, travels to the meetings to provide employment relations, ACC and health and safety updates. At this year’s event in Adelaide, he also outlined his work on the ageing workforce and how skills shortages may affect the NZMRM, with a focus on retaining and retraining staff.
Every second month, the NZMRM holds an executive meeting, which Wyllie sits on. He also joins the full-day sub-committee meetings, which include the marketing meeting for their Scope magazine, the compliance committee, the sustainability committee and the installation standards committee.
The association has a Code of Practice published to its website, which provides the benchmark for compliance when it comes to installing metal roofing and metal rainwater systems. It is referred to by MBIE and Councils alike for compliance to the building code. Every quarter, Wyllie pushes out an update to 18,000 people and organisations who have registered to receive updates.
The Scope magazine is published three times a year and features metal roofing and cladding that showcases NZMRM member products. This goes to 6,000 recipients in hard copy, including architects, specifiers and building companies.
Technical Work
The NZMRM has a test rig based in Huntly that is used for ‘testing to destruction’ metal roofing to establish wind resistance performance of members’ products.
It is the only such rig in the country and the NZMRM provides members with a generic test that they can use on standard profiles like corrugate to meet the new building product information requirements. It has a second rig in Invercargill to test for wind noise. This is set up in a wind tunnel to test various profiles to determine at what angles wind noise might occur so it can advise members on how best to avoid excess noise in their roofing designs. The test rigs are run by contracted consultants who are experts in this area.
The technical work does not stop there, and the NZMRM engages a consultant to run a corrosion project at Limestone Downs on the Waikato Coast where it tests for how well screws and other fasteners perform over the years.
All of this has to be paid for and in his role as Executive Officer, Wyllie approves and signs off all the invoices before they go to the association’s external accountant for processing. The funding comes from the amount of steel roofing coil that members use and is charged at $3 a ton as a levy on every coil that leaves New Zealand Steel or Fletcher Steel’s Pacific Coilcoaters operation. “As you might expect, such levels of payments are fully audited by an external auditors who checks every invoice and payment to ensure it is correctly accounted for,” says Wyllie.
If that’s not enough, Wyllie also writes a newsletter to the NZMRM members every second month, to outline the activities of the association and keep members up to date.
