Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

With everything on hold until the submittals are answered it has been a quiet week. The big news however is that one submittal is a potential problem. In the roof are a series of pipes that will take the rain water away from the middle and out to the edges. These pipe runs are 500 ft long, 12 inches in diameter and are made of PVC . In last week’s site meeting the contractor asked about expansion joints in the pipes. In these conditions PVC expands over 6 inches for every 100ft and the design has no mention of expansion joints. After some research the contractor has come up with a price of $750,000 to incorporate the design change (each joint is $1000). One school of thought is that the contractor should have thought about this even though it is not mentioned in the drawings or specifications as it is common sense the pipe work will expand and not our problem.  However to further complicate matters the current design doesn’t actually have any expansion joints in it and has never leaked in the the past 25 years!  Mike, my mentor thinks this is more of a bluff on the behalf of the Contractor who has under priced the scaffolding he needs to work above the high bay storage area. This has therefore gone back to the designer to make a decision.  I think they will risk it for $750,000 and not bother. I would like to see where the liability lies with that.  And apart from a 5 hour Safe Driving computer package, interviewing my department and learning everything I can about the project I did go on a site visit to Mechanicsburg.  This is an Army Reserve project for a new Drill Hall and Servicing bay that is a year behind.  When the design was done the designer missed a large rock pinnacle just below the surface that just so happened to have every underground service running through it.  This meant a huge variation to the contract was required to dig out this hard limestone.  From the geological data I saw it seemed obvious there was rock there but the site was going well now the warm weather is here.

Hopefully more to do next week.

And in other news:

A quiet week in the US. A turf war has broken  out between rival Ice Cream Vans in New York.  Snow Cone Joe has been chasing Mr Dingle Dangle around the streets offering free ice creams to under cut his rival and put him out of business.  Joe has now been arrested for threatening behaviour.

Road Kill Round Up:

5x Deer

6x Ground Hogs

2x Possums

2x Racoons (actually from last week still)

1xFire Chief (a DUI ran him over whilst he was marshalling a HLS)

Country Hit Parade:

I am looking for my next Heart Break

How are you doing Country Pumpkin (like the frost on the pumpkin)

She was acting single, I was drinking doubles

And finally a warning for all parents (particularly those who shop in Walmart!)

As last week included ANZAC day (thu) and yet another Rostered Day Off for all onsite trades on the fri, actual production has been very slow. So this post covers a week and half as we continue to try and get out of the ground at Dickson Rd. We have now excavated and blinded the four Embankment Retaining Walls (deflection walls) which are utilising as laydown areas for the pile cap steel. We have had a few problems in de-watering the pile cap excavations over the past couple of weeks as the shale material has been acting like a conduit to trickle water further down the alignment into what is the lowest point in the vicinity into our holes. The CSR is also not helping in that respect as they currently stop just before the excavations so water literally floods down the services conduits. After acquiring the a de-watering permit to discharge our ‘clean’ water (floculant added overnight) into Scalabrini Creek we got an enviro slap on the wrist when the pump head slipped out of the bucket and started sucking up the snot at the bottom which meant we were pumpng ‘dirty’ water for a while without our knowledge. We then pumped the other pile cap using a ‘sucker truck’ and eptied it into a holding pond a few hundred metres away having seen the civil team do this yesterday. The pond is geofabric lined and is treated regularly before emptied. The pond holds about 500 ‘sucker truck’ loads and we added 1 which again seemed to cause an enviro stir and our second slap on the wrist. Apparently the civil team ‘dobbed’ us in even though we didn’t think we were doing anything wrong. Theye claim that they had ‘flocced’ the pond the previous day ready to be pumped and that we had now dirtied the water. In our defence we asked for permission to pump from the General Superintendent who also seems to be the civil superintenednt as well. We were also told we require a permit to de-water everytime we want to pump and on the permit it has to state exactly where you are pumping to. Overall it has been a slow and frustrating few days but lots learned about enviro and especially the particulars of Erosion and Sediment Control Management.

We finally started to fix the reinforcement for both pile caps last week and after hoping to pour both by fri we just about managed to pour pile cap A on fri evening before the sun went down.

The shutters are about 80% complete on pile cap B and we should be able to pour this on mon afternoon. Before we can backfill we need to reach 32Mpa (75% of the design strength) which from testing has given us 4 days so by wed this week we should be able to start backfilling pile cap A and fri afternoon or most likely mon morning for pile cap B. We have been instructed by TPD to also carry out Pile Continuity Tests for which one pile from each abutment has been selected and after finally getting rid of the water and sludge at the bottom I was able to get them in to carry out the tests. This seems to involve grinding a bit of the surface away and banging a hammer on the top of the pile and recording the sounds. This will check that the pile is of consistent diameter throughout its length with no voids – I await in atticipation for the results!

Kemp Creek bridge is slowly edging towards completion although we will be cutting it fine. We were originally told that by 15 May the bridge needs to be complete as track will be laid, this has now moved to thr right by 7 days giving us some breathing space. I conducted an 86m^3 pour on tue of the CSR walkways which house the services but also tie in the pre-cast parapit sections. I seem to be getting a reputation with the concreters for being able to order the exact amount everytime we pour which I find rather to close for comfort if I’m honest. On this pour I had 13 ‘agi’ trucks and with 3 to go got my calculator out to work out what I needed to add for the message. Having ordered 80+ I activated an extra 6m^3 and all we had left was about 0.5m^3 which was left in the boom pump. I repeated this with Pile Cap A at Dickson Rd but it was a little more stressful but after we blew out the pump and emptied the hopper it was exact – I may just order a little more on the next pours to give me some wiggle room!

All the walkways are now complete for Kemps Creek apart from a few bays at abutment A. We have poured half of these to the construction joint level. The remainig parapit sections will now be fixed onto these ‘plinths’ and the top half’s poured to tie the parapits in.

The CI’s visit went well and after dropping both off at the Pyrmont office I manged to get back to pour Pile Cap A and see the concrete pump on Kemps Creek bridge die and dump 50 litres of hydraulic fluid on to the deck before it dissapeared rather sharpish