Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Building 45 – Seismic Analysis:

Some really good progress was made on this one. We had an ’emergency’ meeting with the architects, fire safety guy (who fell asleep), electrical engineers and ‘the plumbing guy’. It turns out the scope of works has turned out to be way more costly than the Client anticipated. Gone are the heydays of bottomless Government coffers and it seems that people actually have to think long and hard about what they want nowadays…….still, completely undeterred by this the Client wants USACE to find the savings (of about $1M) whilst still hitting all of the criteria within the scope of works. I got the distinct impression that people have not been completely forthright with the Client as we appear to be continuing ‘at risk’ but with no defined boundaries. I am now very unpopular with the Architects from asking them to confirm exactly WHO is carrying this risk and what are the consequences of that risk. The vague response is that we’ll try and do what we can until the money runs out….well why wouldn’t we?

Some initial ideas for reducing the costs have been to re-use some old fridge doors instead of buying new ones as these will make an attractive ‘historical’ reference, a new boiler system has been canned and pipe dream of having a freight elevator to the basement has been dropped. As you might imagine – these amount to nowhere near the $1M target. Some more sensible ideas involve ‘packeting’ the works into discrete units that can be undertaken in individual chunks and funded separately. The whole of these packets make up the full scope of works, but will theoretically allow the client to undertake the work in stages, although I find it hard to believe given the complexity of Federal Acquisition.

From a structural perspective this really sucks because the building is so old  – but still in use (thus limiting what I could actually get to see). It has been chopped and changed so many times and has suffered significant water damage in the past. Only partial areas have been uncovered for inspection and some significant defects are manifest. Therefore the full extent of the defects can not be fully ascertained – nay – will not be fully ascertained until the contract is in full swing, which will likely lead to additional costs….which the Client does not have. My report will have to contain strict caveats to that effect and I just hope they manage to iron out the colour of their money soon. On the plus side I will get a chance to go and work with the budgeting guys to learn how to make a million dollars disappear.

As for the seismic analysis itself – that was fairly straight forward but required a lot of interpretation and judgement. The only areas that it really falls short on (other than water damaged and rotting floor joists of unknown magnitude) is the fact that there are no ties for any diaphragm members to the masonry – which should theoretically be a fairly simple fix. I have a nice pile of calculations and codes to wade through which should keep me quiet for a while now.

Dam Structural Issues:

It seems the structures department is bracing itself for an inbound Request for Equitable Adjustment (REA) where a contractor tries to tell the evil government that they were diddled out of cash and that they want it back. I had some fairly extensive exposure to this side of life on Phase 2 and so I had a lots of suggestions for them based on this experience. The structures department tends not to get too heavily involved in these but this particular one involves a contractor specifically going against their recommendations – incurring extra costs and now they want to try and turn it around. Whilst I’m happy to get involved – I’d rather not as I’m kind of treading old ground and would rather seek pastures new for Phase 3.

On a related note – the REA I was involved in has been progressed using the tools I developed. The contractor is attempting to claim $3.2M – but the Government reckons only $500k is valid. I will try and get to sit in on the negotiations when they happen.

Happy C-Bomb Day

In Phase 2 I whinged about a particular member of staff in the Huntsville office who’s general attitude to work and responsibilities was stopping my team from being able to do their jobs effectively (and she earned the accolade of ‘C-Bomb’ from my guys). I was continually having to scour the USACE procedures and quote from the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) to continually justify the roles and responsibilities of my staff (We don’t normally have to do this – but because the project was a joint effort – responsibilities became a bit blurred at the edges). Anyway – I singled the lady out as being the single biggest risk to the project and complained for ever to my line manager to get him to tackle the Huntsville office about it…..and he tactfully avoided the issue and left us to run the gauntlet. My parting comment was that if a cog in the machine is broken – then we need to fix it or replace it. Meaning we either need to train this person or move them on. My ConRep and Labour Rep both called me on the same day when they discovered that the C-Bomb has been sacked! Not that this had anything to do with me you see – she clearly upset everyone. The real surprise is actually that it has been proven statistically that here in the US you are more likely to die of natural causes whilst under Government employ than to ever be sacked – so this is kind of big…….although this news is not engineering-y in any way – it did cheer me up….I also know it wasn’t just me.

CPD:

A company called CINTEC (who also has a UK base) delivered CPD for our entire department on their masonry anchors and reinforcement systems. They have a ‘sock’ sheath around steel reinforcement that allows them to create custom anchors by pumping grout into the socks. Good simple stick and string engineering.

Structural Framing:

One of the junior engineers had produced some loading data for a new design which was to be sent out to a contractor to run computational modelling for new roof trusses on a building that I am not allowed to know about (for security reasons). The chief structural engineer was checking it over and was not happy with it and asked me to go through a last.minute.dot.com framing exercise with him to ensure we have sensible numbers. At first I thought ‘what would bat man do?’ but punching him in the face and diving out of the window didn’t seem the right option, so then I thought ‘what the the Farmer do?’ and a cunning scheme was developed on the whiteboard. The only thing that was missing was Steve Dollimore to sit at the back and nonchalantly inform us of any several mistakes….but i think it was sound. Our structures guy was complaining that many graduates do not have a good understanding of structural framing and thus – it drove home the importance of the exercise we did on the PET course…..even if I did curse it at the time.

Structural Canopy:

A design has been produced in house for a canopy above a series of guard booths at the (shhh don’t tell anyone) NSA at Fort Meade. In order to get some more money type questions buzzing in my head I asked if I could help with the take offs and subsequent costing etc. First phase is done – will go sit with the bean counters afterwards to see what they do. First observation is that there is an awful lot of assumption going on as to who is meant to be providing what information. I imagine that if the bean counter is not on top of his game then we may be missing big chunks out of our initial cost estimating process….which might explain why every single project we do seems to go over budget. Will report more next time.

….And in other news:

I have been interviewed by the Public Affairs Office so they can run an article about those dapper chaps that are floating around the office. (Conehead Jim – this refers to Ben and I before you hit me with bouts of sarcasm!). I kept telling the lady to ask Ben about his very British pass-time of ‘Dogging’, as this would make for interesting reading amongst our audience. Unfortunately she looked up the word dogging on google and has decided that this is not a suitable topic for USACE to promote – although she has offered some good advice on a park and ride near Westminster, Maryland.

And finally – if you were wondering about the heading of this week’s blog – the wife bought us Salsa lessons on Groupon for Christmas. We went back for our second of six lessons and whilst I went ahead to use the bathroom, Ulli took a swig from a bottle of coke (outside the establishment) before screwing on the lid and putting it in her handbag. The manager saw this and confronted her upon entering. After going through several variations of bull**it about it being illegal he physically went into her bag and confiscated the bottle (even the security staff in our Government building aren’t allowed to do this). By the time I returned from the bathroom Ulli had come to the conclusion (rightfully) that the manager was going to ‘get it’…….we were invited to leave and never return…… I know America is a big place, but we need to pace ourselves for fear of running out of drinking holes before July.