Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

 Mon 3 Dec – Fri 7 Dec 12

The Transition

I have successfully arranged a time split for phase 3 meaning I get some access to Civil Works projects and also Engineering Division stuff – which is great. Both teams are very good to work with so far and all seem well motivated and understanding of the Development Objective requirements. There’s just the usual IT type stuff to tie up and I’m under way.

Civil Works:

Poplar Island

The poplar Island project is a ‘win – win’ flagship project for USACE. One of the key roles of USACE is to maintain all the navigation channels which involves a lot of dredging. They have been working for many years now with the Ports Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and other local stakeholders and have been using the dredge material to re-build Poplar Island which was almost completely eroded away through natural means. This means that nature habitats are created instead of generating pollution by dumping at sea. They claim that savings are made as less fuel is required to ship the material to deep sea, but when you look at how expensive the project is in general – I don’t see this argument holding water (pardon the pun).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poplar_Island_(Chesapeake_Bay)

For this project I am looking at the hydraulic structures that make up the spillways and inlets to see how they could be improved. I made a visit to the island this week to do an initial survey of the structures. I have laid out the structure of what I aim to achieve here and have met with all of the stakeholders respectively. I will shortly be entering a detailed research phase.

Engineering:

Damaged Bunker

I have been responding to a call for assistance from Afghanistan. Our American cousins decided they needed to build bunkers to house MLRS (yes…British MLRS). The required clear spans are too wide for any of the ‘off the shelf’ designs and so they got a contractor to design and build a bespoke system.

They used HESCO Mil7s stacked up to build a wall, onto which a concrete ring beam was placed before adopting a 3ft deep lightweight truss with blast protection (HESCO Mil5s) on the roof. A 3-bay option was approved and the design has been stamped by a professional engineer (yet to be determined who this was). As they were finishing the roof of the final bay, a catastrophic collapse occurred, injuring several people, three of which had to be med-evac’d.

The US Sapper Captain has to develop a report and an investigation and has requested our help. We have had the world’s supply of photographic evidence returned to us to pour over along with the designs. It’s clearly the lightweight trusses that have given way and many construction errors are visible (mixed use of screws, endemic over-tightening of screws, strap locations at the same place on every truss – potentially inducing a block failure etc).

My first area of research turned up some interesting data. It turns out they are mis-using the HESCO cells entirely. The Mil7s are not even meant to be double stacked – let alone have the additional roof weight on there. Many of the ground level cells are showing signs of extreme distress – irrespective of the fact that the truss collapsed. Along with all of the observations about construction, choice of materials in the truss – I am recommending that they tear down the remaining structure as opposed to trying to fix it with a recommendation that they adopt a more traditional design that incorporates an internal frame of some sort.

The initial report will go next week and I have recommended that we produce a sanitized lessons learned  for wider distribution. I’m also trying to get some of the pictures released for HESCO to use in their education packages. I’ll post some pics once I get the all clear.

Other News

So all in all a very exciting, busy and productive first 4 days. I have managed to wangle a slot on a USACE event in Philadelphia tomorrow so I will have some new turf to explore.

I got to my new cubicle and started chopsing off about all the crap in there. I was throwing out masses of stuff – it’s as if someone just left and didn’t come back. Then I opened a draw and found stacks of food and coffee creamer and bowls that were growing mould before I really had a good whinge about whichever dirty minger was responsible for this. At this point the new boss came and apologized and tried to put it delicately that the guy I was talking about had recently committed suicide…..and nobody had been able to bring themselves to clear out the cube properly yet…… “So he won’t be needing the creamer then?” I replied brightly – happy in the knowledge that all this stuff is up for grabs…..not sure how well he took it. I am refraining from drawing a chalk outline on the floor….that’s a little dark even for me.

Ulli’s birthday this weekend – time to go out disco dancing Borat style!

Also – today is Nicolaus….like a mini Christmas that the Germans celebrate….not sure why or what the significance is. Traditionally you give very small gifts and everyone is happy…..so I look forward to a new pair of socks when I get home.

HAPPY NICOLAUS!