Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Period Covered  16 Jul –  20 Aug

Summary:  Commercial Realities

A period where my roles have been juggled (was “promoted” to the site manager for 10 days as he and Senior Site supervisor were on leave in an amzing bit of civy man management) which has been a real challenge to balance my engineer responsibilities and the hour to hour site management.  This combined with the harsh commercial realties of one of the site team being fired (he wasn’t great but the speed of his dismal was frightening) and one of the key Engineers on site being given a formal warning (made the scapegoat for his subcontractors safety issue)  both these things plus a middle and senior management team which in recent weeks has been very unsupportive to the team has highlighted the responsibility bestowed onto Engineers.

Progress on Site:

Progress on site has been slower than programmed, with core piling taking significantly longer.  Due to the geometry of the site this created a bottle neck and typically made access and progress difficult.  However with this complete the site is opening up and production is increasing all the time.

Bulk earthworks are due to be completed this week and you can now see all four walls of the retention system, it’s great to be able to now appreciate the size of the hospital.  The sites first (of five) tower cranes is due to be erected on Saturday which be another significant milestone.

Fingers crossed these items will maintain the momentum and morale will improve across the team!

Some Technical Stuff

During this period I have been championing a Value Engineering exercise to reduce the amount of dewatering required later on in the project.  This has involved trying to reduce the underside of the pile caps (Currently the last 50 pile caps have a depth of 2.2m which if raised to 2.5m the dewatering will not be required).  This will reduce the cost ( dewatering costs approx $30,000 per week) and make the construction easier and quicker…delinking construction from dewatering capacity issues (Capped at 50L/s because of the treatment Unit).  The two methods I’m investigating are:

1.            Review of services due to be in the ground –can they be pulled up onto the underside of the basement.

2.            Can the depth of the pile cap be reduced.

This is turning into a key issue and has the potential to make or break the sub structure package – more to follow but if succesful this has the potenital to save the project at least $500,000.

Logistics

If it will get in the way it has.  With my outlandish claim that all the boundary conditions had more or less been resolved in my last blog this seems to have been a little premature.  Issues with Multiplex (separate contractor fitting out the service tunnel),  the Chimney (the one that was slowly moving towars the excavation), Bus Stop (painful process to remove bus stop from site boundary and replace 50m around the corner and allow completion of capping beam).  These have all rumbled on over this period.  And though none were too serious 3 x  small delays results in a much bigger delay to project.  On the positive side the chimney has not moved during this period and Multiplex have commissioned the service tunnel and will be of the site in the next 2 days.  (This involved 100,000L being pumped through the system from water tanks in the middle of our site…your service geels would love it down there it full of pipes/valves and other stuff)

Also key to successful planning has been the design catching up and outstripping the progress on site.  This now means (after 7 months of piling) the project has now received all the pile designs and planned the order for the remaining piling (approx. 600 piles) to completion.  This has now allowed myself and the bulk earthworks engineer to plan the order of pile caps till the end as well, which informs steel schedule waterproofing and subsequent tasks.  A significant jigsaw to piece together to allow access and prepare areas ready for columns and subsequent deck pours.

NCH MRP Pile Cap Sequence 2012

Procurement

The post tensioning tenders have now come back from the Subcontractors and I am leading the initial review and organising the Tender interview with the subcontractors.  These are due in the next few days and I’m trying to put some order to these interview and review the quotes.  I’ve been amazed at the varying standards of bids (and the costs vary by about 30%).  Also even though the tender pack was specific about what to include in the pricing no company has done the same things or included all items in the scope.  Though not impossible this will take some thought to be able to compare like for like.

Also all 3 companies are taking exception to the JHG contract with each company coming back with pages of amendments to the subcontract clauses claiming they are illegal or unfair. The construction has also stipulated the PT sub contractor will be responsible for supply and installation of all Temporary Movement Joint (TMJ).  Apparently this is always done by the concrete subcontractor so the PT subcontractors are not interested at all.  I am trying to get to the reason for why the construction director is so keen for the PT subcontractor to do but at the moment it is baffling every one (It has allowed me to investigate TMJ/shear connector technology though which has been very interesting)

All in all,  It looks like my best negotiation skills will be required.

Safety

The site has been rocked by a number of safety incidents in the last few weeks.  This has mainly been a result of working at to height incidents…working on the edge of excavations and servicing on the back of excavators.  A lot of this can be attributed to the legislation change which used to stipulate that working at height was 2m or above but has recently been changed to any change in height.  This is unfortunate as I highlighted this issue a few months ago (see previous blog about when is a fall from height a fall from height) but the site (the safety advisors) are only now reacting to this.  The result was the bulk earthworks contractor being stopped for a day and the whole site shutdown for 4 hours to review all risk assessments and reiterate the safety message to all on site,  (Admittedly I was writing TMR 2 so I missed this day).

So all in all, things are OK, the engineers are still feeling a little vulnerable and still feel undervalued, under resourced and not supported but this has improved with the return of the site manager, we are now working togehter ot try and pull the team togehter again and improve morale, but the ways things are at the moment I will eb suprsied if any of the current site engineers are working for John Holland come Christmas.

In other news I had my first game of indoor cricket last week – great fun and managed to not embarrsss myself.  Cricket season starts in September so am now training a couple times a week with the local club…can’t wait!!