New report into Chch quakes gets tick

The findings of a new report into the Christchurch earthquakes are getting the big tick by an earthquake engineering conglomerate.

The Royal Commission's released its first report into the Canterbury earthquakes, outlining dozens of recommendations relating to technical issues like soil and seismicity, to ongoing research.

The full report is expected to be released early next year.

Win Clark, of the Society for Earthquake Engineering, says it's now a matter of taking the recommendations and putting them into action.

"The New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering would endorse what has been proposed by the Commission. It's now a matter of picking up those recommendations and progressing with them."

Building and Construction Minister Maurice Williamson says the Government will act on every single recommendation.

"Some of them can be done very quickly and the sooner that you get them done, the better, and I think a lot of those have happened already but some of them are a more systemic change to the entire building and construction regime and I would have thought the maximum you're talking of time frames here is three years."

Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment spokesman David Kelly says the recommendations should bring positive changes.

"It gives confidence I think that as the rebuild takes shape that the buildings that are rebuilt will be really robust and they will be at the forefront of our current engineering knowledge."

He says those in the building industry are already aware of many of the 70 recommendations in the report.

"In a sense it's an incremental change, it's not changing direction but it's giving support to that change so there aren't any that are in a sense surprising, they're all I think sensible."

The second half of the report's expected to be released early next year, once all the hearings are completed and the Commission has delivered the findings to the Government.

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