NZGS and SESOC are pleased to advise that the New Zealand Addendum to the ICE Specification for Piling and Embedded Retaining Walls (Third Edition) has now been finalised and published. The final document is dated November 2025, with issue date 1 November 2025.
This new addendum has been developed to enable the ICE Specification for Piling and Embedded Retaining Walls (SPERWall) to be used in the New Zealand construction industry. The addendum is not a standalone document: it must be read in conjunction with SPERWall, and its purpose is to modify the ICE publication, so it is relevant and applicable to New Zealand practice.
The relationship between the documents is as follows:
- The SESOC/NZGS Construction Specification – Bored and Driven Piles remains an important New Zealand reference specification and is generally suited to bored and driven piles, particularly for small to medium-sized building works.
- During development of the piling specification, the expert panel identified that a number of construction methods becoming more common in New Zealand were not covered by that document, including continuous flight auger (CFA) piles, helical steel piles, diaphragm walls and barrettes, secant pile walls, contiguous pile walls, and steel sheet piles.
- SPERWall was identified as providing a robust specification for these additional piling and embedded retaining wall methodologies.
- The NZ SPERWall Addendum + SPERWall together are intended for medium to large civil engineering and building projects, and for piling and embedded retaining wall works that are not covered by the SESOC/NZGS Construction Specification – Bored and Driven Piles.
In summary, the Construction Specification – Bored and Driven Piles and the NZ SPERWall Addendum/SPERWall combination are complementary documents. The former provides a robust New Zealand specification for bored and driven piles, while the latter extends available guidance to a wider range of piling and embedded retaining wall systems and adapts the international SPERWall document for New Zealand use. The addendum also explicitly lists the SESOC/NZGS Construction Specification – Bored and Driven Piles among the standards relevant to piling and embedded wall works in New Zealand.