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!)