Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Following a week in North Carolina avoiding thunder storms and a week of ground rush upon return, things are now at a manageable level again to take 5, breathe, and blog.

C4ISR (Request for Equitable Adjustment)

The initial response ot the contractor has been completed and the fine tooth-comb approach will probably keep them busy for a while. In the meantime I continue to piece together evidence from the project files as to who did what, sort the facts and then put it in context with the contract, specification and the Federal Acquisition Regulations…….it makes me want to hurt myself. We have a schedule specialist working on historical submittals to add weight to our arguments and we will be gathering a game plan soon. I’m considering the use of a decision matrix type affair to map out potential negotiation options and respective costs.

SolarWall

I have reverse engineered the Quality Assurance procedures to identify why we’re having such problems with administering this contract. The fact that two district offices are involved, one with electronic QA and one with paper-based QA with differing responsibilities might be the culprit. Iam working through amended procedures to get us back up to speed. This is the second project that has fallen foul of this. Once construction begins and the flow of information changes this should be resolved fully.

I organised and held a pre-construction meeting on Tuesday this week as well as pushing out a QA plan for comment. Unfortunately the contractor is lacking in several areas including adequate safety considerations and I havve had to delay their start date on site until all is resolved. I took the ConRep for a drive to confirm their emergency route to the hospital (it just didn’t make sense) and suprisingly we ended up at pizza hut. I’m all for the idea of grabbing a pizza on the way to the hospital but I’m not sure how appropriate that is.

The designs are at final review stage and pending a list of revisions I am confident we will be in a position to start getting the materials on site and issue Notice ot Proceed. It’s amazing how many last minute snippets of information have the potential to bring about changes to the project (which we’re obviously trying to avoid for financial reasons).

Next week promises to be hugely busy as we have initial meetings, preps for the first phases of work, site set up, contract and system training etc etc . I’ll bore you with it another time.

Bldg 760 / 732

The designs for these projects are in review in preparation for tender purposes. I managed to add some benefit of the experience from the EDC solarwall project again but am still astounded by the fact they appear to be rushing this while thing through…and then they will be wondering why the changes are costing so much. The contractor on the EDC Solarwall is obviously bidding on these projects also – judging by the questions they keep asking.

Headquarters Project…

Has finally been awarded! 7 months late. There are a million and one outstanding RFIs and the team is still not yet complete, but I reckon with a good wind we can start pre-drilling the pile locations within a month….. My collegues love my optimism.

Client Relationships (Across the whole installation)

These are an issue at the minute. The clients representatives have little interest in how the projects are being run and rarely bother to attend progress meetings. When the projects aproach completion the interest level rise, and then they see the things they are’n happy with. This results in complaints and a bad rep for USACE. There is a lot of ‘them and us’ when we ought to be one and the same. I am reminded of when a partnership agreement fell to pieces for exactly the same reasons when I was working at a local authority. I have appointed a spy to find out what the score is (One of our guys used to work with them and is trusted).

Ashley Reservist Center – Playing Sherlock Holmes again

I visited the site to observe concrete samples being taken for petrographic analysis and have openend yet another bag of worms….I can’t bring myself to give the whole story here as you will pole pencils in your eyes. Basically I noticed some irregularities with an independent test company’s figures. These were corroborated by some additional testing and now we are having to seriously ask ourselves if we want to push this further. The company would lose its licence and the whole Quality Control regime on the project would be in tatters….as well as every other USACE project conducted in Pennsylvania over the last decade! The plot has been thickened further by potential falsification of batch tickets by the concrete supplier. In any case the alegations have huge implications and can not be made without……ait for it……concrete evidence (boom boom). We are waiting on further lab test results before figuring out a course of action. I’m recommending an audit of the test lab and supplier – but who pays? Currently we can keep taking samples at our own expense and then pass the costs on to the contractor every time they are found to be lacking but this is not a full fix. I’ll report more if it gets exciting.

Conclusions

The way to avoid costly modifications and changes is to ensure that what you put out to tender is as accurate and complete as possible….which the Government consistently fails to do.

We produce PMPs and then give them a really good stiff ignoring. In my view they are not written at the right level. When it all goes wrong nobody refers to the plan to see who’s meant to be doing what.

The contractor can never win. Even if his submittals are government approved, we can still stop him in his tracks when we find additional mistakes. I just hope his profit margin is up there.

What people saythey will do and what they actually do are different things. I don’t want to become a grumpy synical old man….but I think I see my future.

Other news:

Weeks few before the boys go back to school.

Ulli seeks additional hours at work and is preparing to do a realtor course.

3D photography skills improving.

Can now identify smell of skunk (The animal – not the weed)

Still haven’t won the lottery (hence blogging instead of seeking new identity in Caribian).

Top 5 Country Songs:

I Went Back to My Fourth Wife for the Third Time and Gave Her a Second Chance to Make a First Class Fool Out of Me
I Want a Beer as Cold as My Ex-Wife’s Heart
It’s Hard to Kiss the Lips at Night that Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long
I Wanna Check You for Ticks
My Give-A-Damn’s Busted