Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

This week has be punctuated by the ANZAC day public holiday on Thursday which essentially converted the week into a 3 dayer as it seems everybody managed to get their leave passes in for Friday to make it a good 4 day weekend. I am not entirely sure how and why they were all sanctioned by the powers that be but it left me with a site without a Site Manager or Supervisor for both Friday and Saturday meaning that team set deadlines were missed.

As previously expected, the slip-lane has assisted in the turmoil this week, and only exacerbated by crane breakdowns has meant that the delivery of the beam and bottom mat steel for Zone 5 was not delivered on Monday as directed but finally made its way to site on Wed evening, just in time to see the fixers waving goodbye for their long weekend. The steel supplier was unable to deliver on the Monday as the order was still incomplete due to an error on their part. The carnage (deliberate typo for Craneage), booked to move it from the slip-lane to zone in the evening of the Wed, broke down meaning that as the skeleton fixer crew returned to site on the Friday, the steel was only just making its way over. This obviously caused issues for the fixer contractor who blames JHG for all the delays and the cost of his manpower that was under used for the week.

The State (Clients Representative) issued notice on JHG on Wed afternoon in relation to quality issues they had found around site. As there were limited Non-Conformance Reports (NCR) filed in the system, the PM had a pretty hard time explaining why the situation was as it was. All South engineers were then called into a meeting with the PM and given a formal letter detailing how things must get better and questioned on why and how these issues happened. It smelled strongly of a blame issuing exercise but actually highlighted processes that I don’t think had been briefed to everyone, as a wise man once told me, “You don’t know what you don’t know”. The following day off for ANZAC day was welcomed.

ANZAC day started with a 0430 Dawn service in Kings Park overlooking the Swan River for sunrise, followed by a good breakfast in town with Nicky, Remi (Australian RE) and a few other Engrs prior to watching possibly one of the longest parades in history – the bands were running back to the start of the route as there were not enough to go around (not that it made much difference as nobody was in time). I think Remi and I were the only people to Perth who were wearing suits but not marching. I was impressed at the 50,000 people that turned up for the dawn service and the support in town throughout the day. I would like to think that a similar day in the UK would be so well supported. Nicky and I then went for an afternoon sail on the Tall Ship Leeuwin 2 – billed as a chance to pull up sails and crew the boat, but actually more a money spinner for the trust where you were crammed onto a deck and watch a rather inept volunteer crew do it for you. Nice to get out on the water though, and spurred us on to start planning a trip to the Whitsundays for a sail later in the attachment.

The H&S issues on site are well known, and management are leading the charge to transform the statistics from the top down. JHG head office has now sent 2 H&S Ninjas to site with the top cover of the Operations Manager for infrastructure. The stimulus for this I believe was on a knife-edge decision whether or not to close the site down for a period to rectify the H&S situation. The Ops manager gave a presentation on the JHG mission and visions to all those JHG employees who were actually on site during the moral boosting period of 1600-1730 on Friday afternoon. The emphasis was on teamwork, integrity and accountability, but I have to say that I left feeling a little patronised and, after Wednesday’s session, a little unsupported. My reaction to this was to have a think about ways to turn the South team around. My initial ideas are:

• Social activities to break down barriers,
• A daily RAG’d milestone status update (within the South, Centre and Basement blocks) back-briefed to the PM mid-weekly as a method to focusing effort,
• A change in team focus on solution finding not fault finding.

Any further ideas would be welcomed.  My feeling is that people currently don’t want to raise issues for fear or persecution.

Much like Rich has found, this week has really brought home to me the pettiness in the construction industry that takes effort away from producing a quality product. The 2 cases in particular this week have been:

1. The ongoing saga of kit on the ground. The formworkers were asked to remove their kit from an area that needs to be road-based prior to falsework construction. They claim that all the kit isn’t theirs (true, but the vast majority is) and this has resulted in photos being sent between JHG and WCF, which has developed to annotated photos and lists, which has increased to annotated, annotated photos, and coloured lists. In my view, in the time taken to log all the kit down there it would have been quicker and cheaper to programme a late shift for the crane and just move it but this would require an additional cost to someone.
2. The crane allocation.  Daily crane allocation meetings have intensified to the extent that PM’s and Construction Directors now attend. At 2 hours for some of these meeting it is such a waste of senior and site management time it is incredible. What is more amusing is the bloke who is employed by one of the contractors (or maybe all of them) to sit on his arse and log what the cranes are lifting to ensure compliance with the timetable and give them ammunition to respond to JHG.

I have said it before, but this job would be so much simpler if there was only 1 or 2 contractors! Engineers and managers could then focus on their primary role and help bring the project back on track.

Excessive time wasted on documentation