Our People
Our firm was born as a result of vast experience associated with existing buildings. DIZHUR is an independent firm of technical engineering experts that are world recognized leaders in existing masonry structures. Together we assist our clients and structural consulting engineers to address their challenges of ever increasing complexities. We are specialist in building investigations, on-site and laboratory testing, advanced structural modeling of masonry structures as well as development and advice on most cost-effective seismic retrofit methods.
Dr Dmytro Dizhur
A rare breed – a hands-on engineer with a gold academic pedigree. Dr Dmytro Dizhur has dedicated his career to mitigation of earthquake risks for large-scale buildings and various global heritage structures. He is a leader in devising creative and innovative stability-testing methods in order to simulate earthquake loads, driving new thinking towards optimising solutions. Dr Dizhur has advised on over one thousand major projects for assessing, restoring and strengthening masonry buildings. He often saves millions of dollars via innovative structural testing, seismic modelling, and using cost-effective materials.
Team Partners
Dr Marta Giaretton
Marta has the keen mind of an engineer and the heart of an architect – she finds anthropomorphising a building instructive in gaining an additional aspect not discernible from a set of drawings. After leading emergency post-earthquake inspections of masonry buildings in Italy in 2012 and 2016, Marta has pioneered New Zealand research on over 700 stone masonry buildings, defining their seismic performance and most common vulnerabilities. This work has provided information on most suitable improvement techniques to support conservation of these buildings and most importantly, people safety.
Alessandro Galasco
Consultant and structural designer for private and public bodies in structural and seismic design of structures, seismic vulnerability assessment of Italian schools and hospitals, design of retrofit interventions on existing buildings. His expertise also include retrofit of existing and heritage buildings, numerical modelling of structures, software development in the field of structural engineering.
Dr Ilaria Senaldi
Numerical simulation of the seismic response of a prototype of building stone masonry with deformable diaphragms. Development and calibration of non-linear numerical models for the simulation of shaking table tests on masonry buildings. Consultant in structural and seismic design of masonry structures, static and seismic assessment and retrofit of existing and heritage buildings and survey of existing structures.
Research Associates
Dr Ivan Giongo
Ivan received his PhD in Civil and Mechanical structural system engineering from Italy's highest ranked University of Trento (Italy). His research is mainly focused on the seismic behaviour of existing masonry buildings and on the retrofit of existing timber diaphragms. He is involved in Italian national research projects (e.g. RELUIS – Laboratories University Network of seismic engineering) and actively collaborates with the Masonry Team of the American Society of Civil Engineering.
Professor Jason Ingham
Jason did his BE and ME at The University of Auckland, followed by a PhD at the University of California at San Diego. He is currently the president of the Structural Engineering Society of NZ (SESOC), a past president of the NZ Concrete Society (NZCS), a past member of the management committee of the NZ Society for Earthquake Engineering (NZSEE), and is a Fellow of Engineering New Zealand. He is also a member of the leadership team for QuakeCoRE, the New Zealand Centre of Research Excellence for Earthquake Resilience.
Dr Francesco Graziotti
Execution of full-scale shaking table tests on unreinforced masonry buildings in collaboration with EUCENTRE. Development of simplified numerical models for fast vulnerability assessment of masonry structures (fragility functions) and studies of the seismic performance of structural and nonstructural components. Collaboration with international laboratories TU Delft, TU Eindhoven, LNEC Lisbon and firms ARUP, Shell, P&P Engineering, Econstruct, Sismica360, Goppion.
