(Nothing like The Apprentice but) You’re Fired
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!!
Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog 
Stephen
I could never get my head around that thing that the contractors do with seemingly unambiguous tender forms either. Some of the time it seemed to be that they were trying to be clever and include facets of their bid that they thought would be advantageous for them, but that weren’t specifically asked for in the price. At other times it just looked like the office cleaner had been given the job of putting the price together. In this latter case, I gradually came to form the opinion that these contractors were either a). not interested in the work or b). not capable of competently doing the work.
The top and the bottom prices were also interesting case studies and usually fell into the category of not wanting the work (these forms can also look like the cleaner completed them) for the top end and trying to buy their way into the market at the bottom end. The bottom end, however, is also complicated by companies that have missed something in the specification producing an erroneously low figure for the work actually required (the DIO is a big fan of falling into this trap).
Over the years I developed a rule of thumb that I never had the courage to apply blindly, but after spending days with the QS and engaging in lots of tender clarification work, seems to work pretty well:
a. If you have successfully worked with one of the companies before and they are not the top price choose them. This will continue until they get complacent, screw up and require you to consider the next two options.
b. If you have no experience of the tendering companies, go for the second most expensive. Note: the exception to this is if you have a couple of companies that are close to each other at the top price and well above the mean. In this case neither want the work and are trying to price themselves out of the market whilst avoiding being taken off the list of approved contractors.
c. The outrageously cheap, but seemingly compliant quote can’t be discounted if the contractor is new to the approved list. If they are a good company, given the chance these guys will bend over backwards to please in order to be able to elevate themselves into category a). of this rule of thumb. The downside is that you are taking a huge risk with a company that you have never worked with before, so make sure you do a lot of homework before going with this option.
DISCLAIMER: These views are solely those of the author and are not in anyway endorsed by the RSME, HMG or the RICS. No scientific research was conducted in the formulation of this rule of thumb and no animals were hurt testing it (but a few ulcers were contracted).
On the tender comparison front – obvious but sometimes overlooked:
Compare rates, identify items with high variation between tenderers and ask whether they’ve has spotted over measure or under measure. On large volume items make sure that the unit rates (if compound, i.e. a rate might include excavate, dispose, provide a pipe, bed, backfill and compact) make sense (ie are large enough to for the item coverage?).
Identify ‘christmas box’ tenders. The guys don’t need the job so whack in a high tender because it is always felt necessary to respond to a tender call.
On the piling… What the hell is going in on Staircase 3 ( BD-52 to BC-53) ?
The top of pile cap level seems to vary from 2.65 to 4.55m AD across the job So I assume that the 50 piles you refer to have a cap top level on the higher side?
The depth of a pile cap is almost always set by the need to develop a full bond length form the centre of the edge piles (think of a two pile cap and a simple truss analogy the two piles are the supports to a (column) load applied at the apex of the truss. The bottom steel is then a tension member and the bond length allows the tension to develop in the bottom tying steel). So without thinking too much. Look at the bottom steel work out full bond length and determine whether they’ve added a bit. To work out whether the bottom steel is over the top, you’d need to go into column loads……remember to keep wearing your box otherwise we’ll have to have these conversations at a higher pitch.
Steve, I love the fact that both of our sits have been closed down now for safety incidents. In your case it was only 4 hours but here it was the best part of 4 days! You would think that JHG would learn. Likewise, morale is rock bottom here. We’ve now lost 3 of our 8 engineers and because we are so close to the end of the project (apparently but if it’s finished by the time I leave I’ll be amazed) they are not getting replaced. Definitely undervalued and in need of support, particularly the young ones.
Enjoyed reading this one. Enough said by previous comments but thought I’d register a hit and grin. Keep at it!