Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Because one of the projects we have going on is the building of a new kitchen inside the old hospital, I’ve been looking at refrigeration a lot recently.  Whilst we have a consultant for almost everything, commercial refrigeration seems to be viewed as something of a black art in these parts.  With a mechanical consultant unwilling to commit to a design, and a fit-out consultant who would only provide a performance specification (‘How do I build it then?’ was my question), I was asked to do some work with a number of WA refrigeration contractors to come up with a suitable design.  Immediately, I found that the gene pool was shallow, and, like the shallow reefs off this lovely coast, dominated by a rouge predator (did you know Perth is now the great white shark attack capital of the world?).  It was fairly obvious that one of the contractors had managed to cut himself a deal with some of the major WA suppliers and was muscling out the others (some even told me they had been warned off); unfortunately, WA is not unfamiliar with price collaboration and corruption.

So I got the only contractor (he of the shadows) who would even talk about tendering in so we could discuss the design.  I had billed it as a bit of a workshop where we could turn the performance spec into an outline design.  Two things were obvious within a few minutes: firstly, the refrigeration exercises we did at Chatham were very useful, and have made us easily as competent in refrigeration design as the jokers we have to work with (thank you Mark and Jim); and secondly, that this guy didn’t know his psychrometric chart from a hole in the ground.  Eventually, I was told that the price was the price ($1.3M by the way), the design was the design (done by someone else with his margin, rather than the performance spec, in mind evidently) and that I could take it or leave it, ‘but if ya leave it mate, there’s no one in the State that’ll touch ya.’  It was a little like something from Goodfellas.  Anyway, it turns out he was right; no one else would talk to us and he wouldn’t budge.  He was mightily displeased with me into the bargain, since it turns out he has been bamboozling us, and our client, for some time.

Having discussed this all with my PM, I was tasked with finding an alternative, which I have been doing over the last few weeks.  The guys I’ve recommended we sign up (I find out for definite tomorrow, but it’s really a no brainer) are based in Melbourne, will have all of the cold room components and the chiller units assembled in Melbourne, will fly a team of technicians here to do the build, and are still significantly cheaper than the, frankly, criminals we’ve been happy to work with in the past.  The result is that we save in the region of $300K and get a system that is much better suited to the client’s requirements than to the contractors profit margin, as was the case before.  A bonus for me was that I had to report on the Melbourne contractor’s previous projects, the standards at his factory and of his suppliers, and the technical competency of his team to produce a suitable design.  We did a test design exercise together based on the scout hut problem.

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Apart from the trip to Melbourne (I took Tasha along too), we’ve managed to fit in some excellent Aussie fun recently.  My office took Tasha and I to watch an AFL (aussie rules) match the other day, which was excellent, and we’ve made friends with a player for Port Melbourne in the VFL (Aussie Rules but limited to Victoria, cheaper, and with more fighting) who’s invited us to the grand final in a few weeks’ time.  Tasha is studying hard and has her entrance exam in Melbourne on the day before