Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

This week I have mostly been finding my feet (try and say it like the fast show character).  With the arrival of a mobile phone, a temporary laptop and having acquired a desk by buttering up the PMs PA, I have commenced working.  At the start of the week it was a bit slow as we moved into our house and I had to deal with the removals arriving, but from Wednesday on it was all work, work, work.  Well at least until 11am when the heavens opened and we had 120mm of rain in 2 hours. Oh how I love my scooter in the rain, particularly when water creeps into the engine and it keeps stalling!

Rain does not however stop the office which continues to be a hive of activity until about 2pm on a friday when people start to sly away for flights home if they’ve got Saturday off. This week I am not so lucky and am on the saturday shift but at least it’s an early finish with an 8 hour instead of 10 hour shift.  It’s also giving me the opportunity to write this!

My roles and responsibilities are slowly taking shape and I’m running with the enabling works for the traveller to construct the jetty. We had our first meeting with a contractor this week and I will take the tender forward for revision of the scope of works before advising my package leader as to when to award the contract.  This is only a measly $250,000 but it is something none the less and I am happy for it.  I shall be looking to squeeze the contractors price in order to maximise profitability balanced against the fact that we still don’t know when the start date will be.  We are waiting on Bechtel to issue permits for construction and from that point it will take about 8 weeks until the first boots on the ground.

I have also been tied up in classic Sqn 2IC business, proof-reading the work of junior personnel.  The project plans (there are numerous including, traffic, safety, environment, etc) all need to be submitted for signature by the PM before being approved by Bechtel.  I’ve been going through each of these in turn and conducting the proof reading, re-formatting, etc but it does give me a strong understanding of the project.  I have also been amending accordingly, adding what engineer value I can where appropriate.  Disappointingly they do not conform to JSP 101 but they will by the end of April when I’ve finished with these docs!  The package leader is semi-impressed with my OCD and attention to detail but would probably prefer me to be a bit quicker.

In terms of engineering, I’ve not seen much as yet as the Jetty project will not be starting until May. However, the commercial side is ramping up and I’m going to be getting ticks in those boxes at least.  I am going to be responsible for the test piles and their testing and to save money I am currently trying to use existing pile cut-offs that would otherwise be sent for scrap. The concept is to weld sections together in the hope of saving on the outlay for a 40m length of 1200mm diameter, 25mm pile.  This might work but I need to do a bit of work on the strengths of welds, etc to ensure that they don’t fail in the testing. Watch this space.

I’m also designing (well on a fag packet as John would say) a concept pile cut off platform by bastardising (technical term on site here) a 3 pile group platform that was fabricated and not used on the MOF project.  This is a work in progress and once I’ve done some calcs and with a bit of builders eye, I’ll hopefully be able to send my design off to the fabricators for said bastardisation!

Moving to off-site matters, I have spoken with John Reddie this week who was keen to learn from our transition from the UK to Gladstone. We certainly had a better one than the Marsh family but I suspect it was more to do with personality on my side and subtle/gentle persuasion as appropriate.  That said, the PM won’t let me have international dialling on my phone!  I’ve also been in contact with a communications executive (media man) from JHG who met me on a site visit. He’s going to run an internal JHG piece on me (us – I let him know of Steve, Ros and Dan’s existence) so there may be more to follow on that.

Family is all well. Lisa is now 35 weeks pregnant so the final push is getting ever closer. She is more relaxed now with us being in the house which is allowing me to focus on work. It’s long hours so we don’t see each other much in the week but any more and I might spoil things! Lisa has successfully filled the house with tat and I’m amazed at how much she sent without me knowing, particularly cushions, throws and bunting!  Most importantly though is the fact that the kids mountains of toys are here, my dive kit (not that there’s any dive clubs in Gladstone as it’s only in the barrier reef national park) and of course, Austyn’s birthday presents!

All-in-all, life is good.  More of the same is to follow and I’m still enjoying it (apart from the 4am wake up call).  No photo’s as yet as I’m awaiting permission from Bechtel but this should be through soon. Otherwise I will set up a covert OP and they’ll never even know….

TTFN,

Roy