Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Hi everyone.  This is a shamelessly AER focused post so please feel free to lambast me for my dryness. Lambast me baby!  More interesting (picture based) posts to follow shortly…

Here are just a few of my general experiences and observations from the first 2 months on site.  I’ll do more on the technical nitty-gritty of the tasks over the next few weeks.

Experience:  Updated Roles and Responsibilities

So, I’ve picked up a few extra responsibilities over the last few weeks;  I’m now Services coordinator for all Public and Public/Private Shared facilities, Site Supervisor for two discrete projects, and the Services Defects Manager for all areas of the Programme already completed but still within their defects liability period.  Sir John is certainly getting his dollars’ worth out of DDK.

On the public/shared side of the site, that means I’m overseeing the coordination of services in a surgical day procedures unit, a theatre recovery ward, a catheter laboratory (more on which later), a new kitchen, a medical records and training facility, a supplementary services (chapel, AV etc.) unit, a central energy building, and a heat distribution plant room.  All of these involve refurbishment or expansion, and so working around other live services and, mostly, in areas where patients are still being treated.

Observation:  The moto in all of this is very much hospital first and, as the hospital seems to have a pretty much zero tolerance approach to any disruption what so ever, this means anything that affects a hospital service or operation, generally occurs at midnight or on a Sunday, or (and this is my favourite) both.

Analysis:  It might seem that the programme planners were rather short sited in developing this strategy; the CI remarked that it would probably have been a lot cheaper to simply build a new hospital next door and then knock down the old one.  It is certainly true that the cost of the constant frustration of progress, because of the need to work out of hours, is significant; the hourly labour rates, probably the most expensive element of any work packet I’ve been involved in so far, doubles as soon as 4pm passes.

The reason is threefold:

1. There is no space.  The city of Joondalup, and the suburbs around it, are expanding so fast (in no small part driven by the influx of Irish, Spanish, Italian, and British workers fleeing the hopeless prospects in Euroupe, lending Joondalup its nickname of ‘Pom City’) that there is simply no space to build a new hospital other than inside the old one.

2. Australia does not have publicly funded hospitals in the same way the UK does.  Many facilities in the existing hospital are privately owned and funded.  No one would pay to replace or relocate them, when they are perfectly profitable where they are.

3. Each ward or facility is in fact a business in its own right.  When the refurbishment of one affects the operation of another, there may be significant compensation claims.  As such the hospital’s operator, Ramsey Health Care, is particularly unwilling to sanction any interference with business as usual, unless it absolutely can’t be avoided.  With each patient paying, on average, $1000 a day, not to mention the everyday exigencies of any hospital, the choice between closing beds and making builders work overnight is a simple one.

The bottom line is that it’s too difficult, and too expensive (to individual business units) to do anything other than refurbish and expand the hospital from the inside out.

Experience: I’m also the site supervisor, normally a role given to a bricks and sticks man, for the Central Energy Building and the Heating Plant Room.  This means that in addition to coordinating the services, I’m also supervising and coordinating all of the civil (not that much) and general building works.

Whilst the civil and building things I’m involved in aren’t particularly technical – we have consultants for that – they come in tremendous volume, and I’m having to learn about slab, column & beam construction, sub base properties, and general building techniques and practice.  The civil training we E&Ms get at the RSME is very useful here, but more knowledge of the difference between an PFC and a Z Purlin, for example, would be useful to us.

Analysis:  Perhaps the steepest part of my learning curve has been to do with simply understanding what it is that the consultants and contractors are talking about.  Whether talking about an purlin, a reveal, or a bulkhead, there is a good deal of terminology, that any engineer, regardless of discipline, needs to be conversant with.

Recommendation: I have found that 2 books have been invaluable as desk guides.  First is the Building Services Pocket Book, published by Newnes.  This is a very good practical guide to services in any building; focusing on mechanical services – which I now know dictate the design of all high level services layouts – it offers invaluable notes and is simple to understand in a hurry.  The second is the Architect’s Handbook, published by the Architectural Press, which is an excellent general guide to building.  I’ve also see the Building Construction Hand Book, published by Butterworth-Heinemann, but this is a little basic compared to the other two.  I would recommend that all students on PET be issued with the first two books, or something similar. Alternative suggestions anyone?

Experience:  Finally, as the Services Defects Manager, I’m responsible for receiving, understanding, and assigning the Client’s defects notifications, as well as identifying many of them myself.  I rather walked into this job, as I found so many defect as I walked around the place, that it became easier to deal with them myself than to staff them to someone else.

Analysis:  Essential to doing this properly is the ability to compare what is in from of you with the drawings.  I have found that it has taken me a few months to understand, quickly, the myriad of technical drawings that are encountered on a construction site.  Because the difference between a quick and amicable solution and a protracted and increasingly entrenched e-mail rally often lies in understanding the drawings and specification the fastest, the ability to rapidly interpret technical drawings would enhance the preparedness of PET students for Phase 2 work.

Recommendation:  More technical drawing comprehension should be incorporated into phase 1; everything from the EWIS to the structural steel.  I have plenty of PDF example drawing that could be used to set such exercises and can send them if required.

And Finally:  In an effort to prevent this from being the driest post since, well ever, here are some pictures of the weather in Perth over the last few days – get it? ‘Dry’? Yack yack!

And worse is forcast for tomorrow –  last week it was 30 and sunny?!?