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Browse the 1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand
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Graphic: An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand 1966.

Warning

This information was published in 1966 in An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A. H. McLintock. It has not been corrected and will not be updated.

Up-to-date information can be found elsewhere in Te Ara.

STANDARDS

Contents


Value of Standards

One example, the Model Building Bylaws (NZSS 95), shows the importance and practical significance of standards. Every local body had its own bylaws until 1935 when the first model building bylaws were published. This meant that in some towns and cities a builder had to work under some 20–30 differing and often contradictory sets of rules. Today the model building bylaws drafted through the New Zealand Standards Institute have been voluntarily adopted by more than 90 per cent of the local bodies. The saving in time and money is immense.

Today the value of good standards is universally recognised. They are an aid to design in manufacture and building, as well as to purchasing, storage, transport, and distribution, and they lead to wider acceptance of materials, products, and processes. The main purposes of standardisation are still to reduce needless variety in goods of a like nature, to lower production costs, to increase quality, and to make goods easily interchangeable.

With their aim for simplicity and economy in production and distribution, standards reduce waste and help to make the best use of the country's production.