Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Six weeks into my design office placement with WSP, I think I have come to understand why consultants are consultants, contractors are contractors and architects are architects….!  I was also surprised to discover how quickly I switched allegiances and adopted a consultant’s perspective….nothing to do with the central location, swish office, great coffee machine and invitation to the opening of the Shard of course!

I was asked to contribute to the monthly ‘Knowledge Sharing Forum’, and conscious that I was highly unlikely to have discovered anything structurally ground breaking worthy of dissemination to the WSP Structures department, I went for a comparison of a design office and the military!  Interestingly, I found the design office to be more comparable in many respects than site (summarised in the meeting minutes below):

Major Rachel Beszant is on secondment from the Royal Engineers. From her first month in WSP she has drawn five key similarities, and two differences to the military:

The similarities are:

• There is a strong teamwork aspect to our business – though we are each capable as individuals we can only deliver the projects we do working in teams.
• Within each team there is a structured hierarchy. This is necessary to ensure accountability and allocation of responsibility
• Goalposts change throughout the lifetime of a project. Whilst in the Army this may be due to a change of political leadership in our business we are faced with clients and architects changing their minds and on-site discoveries.
• Communication is vital to the success of our projects. This is particularly well done through the structures portal.
• People are the centre of the organisation and success is reliant on the skills and expertise they have.

The main differences being:

• As a private company WSP has to maintain commercial competitiveness. Money does unfortunately drive many of the decisions we make, though this does also ensure we are efficient.
• There are no Sergeant-Majors enforcing discipline on the second floor!

I fear if my turn comes around again before July I may have to work on a groundbreaking discovery!

Aside from organisational and people observations, I can confirm that geotechnical parameters and water levels are indeed as vague as John warned us… and London is sat on a lot of water! The British Standard generation hate the EuroCodes….. and software packages are almost as reluctant to change as the BS era!  Software modelling is the way forward as long as you understand the programme and know how to fix the errors, and  hand calculations are key for checking, but any longer than 2 pages are reserved for graduates (or RE attachment officers!!)