Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

3-6 Apr 12

So – we don’t appear to recognise religious holidays over here, but never mind, we’ll make up for it.

Progress has now been made with log on details for the CAC and I now have access to an official e-mail address and some of the compulsory training.

Further progress has been made on the driver’s licence front. My wife, as she is German, has no need to take her test due to a reciprocal agreement between states…..and even though I did my test in Germany – muggins here has retake it anyway. I attended a compulsory 3 HOUR class on drug and alcohol awareness and let’s just say it was a good job I’d already had the suicide prevention training at work! The test is booked for 18 April in Annapolis (about an hour and a half drive away.)

I bumped into some of the sub-contractors for the Solar-wall project during lunch break and after the initial ‘oh crap – it’s the Client!’ sort of introductions they finally opened up a little to just chat about projects and work for the Government. I discovered that having just got my head around the whole ‘let’s spend $3.5M in the name of science to see if this stuff works.’ it now turns out there is another existing building with this system already installed. Upon asking why we aren’t just measuring energy usage from this building compared to an equivalent sized building on the base, nobody could say….and I’m now asking again why we’re spending so much money making sure the national debt is kept up to world expectations. I’m probably going to get punched soon for pointing this stuff out all the time.

We had our first RFI’s in on the solar-wall project relating to the construction of the internal racking system which actually forms the structural support for the roof itself. The structural engineer needs to prove that the existing walls and structure can hold the proposed solar-wall and needs certain ‘as built’ info. I have done some digging around and it turns out that the whole roof is to be completely replaced in the near future….so now I’m concerned as to whether or not the structural engineer needs to be worrying about this at all and if it would be better to get the structural engineer from the solar-wall project and the structural engineer from the roof project to liaise directly to save on potential cross-purposes and wasted effort. The issue arises because for maintenance contracts, the Defence Logistics Agency runs and manages it’s own projects, no matter how expensive, but for new works projects of over $750K they have to use USACE for the contract administration and quality assurance and quality control and hence the oversights. Hence we have two projects on the same building that involve different organisations. I have since booked in a meeting with the engineers at DLA to further orientate myself with the local procedures and will also go and see the overall project manager from the DLA for the solar-wall project to iron out these RFI’s in a sensible manner. I am sure that all of this has been considered and thought through and it’s now just a case of making sure communication channels are established.

Have booked in to go on an Officer Training Day with the Corps next month looking at how they clear and maintain the bays as well as some media training.

Child number 2 has arrived safely. Now trying to find non-expensive ways of entertaining the damn thing. (We love him really).

Enjoy the Easter break guys and gals!

McFry