Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

It has come to the point now where none of my office can talk to the Contractor’s Executive Officer (big cheese on site) without wanting to commit serious injury to him.  To say this guy is unhelpful is an understatement.  It seems the expansion joint issues are not the only show stoppers he is employing to buy more time and money. 
The past weeks have been spent mostly in meetings.  After a partnering session last week it was decided there was not enough inter stakeholder communication so to make up for that we had four meetings in a week: a whole site meeting to up date the Client on all projects on camp, a health and safety meeting with the contractor, a partnering session with “all” stakeholders and a site specific update meeting with the client. 
The first meeting was very long, had lots of top level squabbling and achieved nothing in my opinion.It did have donuts.
The second was our first attempt to get the contractor back on schedule.  As it stands the Health and Safety Officer for the contractor has yet to produce a piece of work that would constitute a complete H&S assessment so we cannot authorise work to proceed.  The Executive Officer swears blind (for a whole hour on send only) that this guy is amazing but this is not supported by the paperwork he submitted.  The big issue is that work needs to be done 80ft up in the air and a fall arrester system needs to be employed.  A Qualified Person must design a system in accordance with USACE guidelines (they must have an engineering degree and experience in the fall arrester industry).  This H&S guy is only Competent at best through a 5 day course run by a manufacturer and a distance learning package done on line 5 years ago.  However the Contractor insisted his name is submitted as the Qualified Person but then said he was going to get in Qualified Fall Arrester Engineers to design the system anyway! The H&S guy also submitted a Risk Assessment (Activity Hazard Analysis (AHA) over here) for a cherry picker with only 3 risks identified – People falling, things dropping, the rig moves! This was only the first that I have been checking over, the remainder are equally poor including the Rescue Plan (“fire department will be used if there is an accident” – not a bad idea accept if they had talked to the on site fire department they cannot deal with problems in the building as there are no ladders long enough!) .  His response – “Tell me what you want me to say” or “This is the way we have always done it”.  He is on his final warning, but I am not sure what constitutes the last straw yet. 
Our third meeting between stakeholders was equally frustrating.  The Design Contractors and USACE cannot believe the contractor has been on site since Oct 12 and is using phrases such as “I have not had the chance to look at the building so I have no plan on how I am going to proceed” and “I don’t know what order to do things because I don’t want to disrupt anyone”.  The contract states work cannot be inhibited but as a change to the contract temporary offices for 105 pax will be set up to house office workers whilst their department is up graded.  The Contractor Schedule says it will not be until this time next year that a temporary office will be ready to move in to and they are only setting up portacabins!  Another hour was wasted discussing how the contractors proposed plan might affect the office workers.  At this point I pointed out that if they had a Rep from the Office building who knew what the impact would be at future meetings then they would have saved themselves a lot of wasted time guessing.  I think my accent might have confused them because the look I got from round the table was close to the one I would expect from saying “I am going to cover myself in chocolate and let you lick it off”!
The fourth meeting was a simple catch up on all the week’s meetings where it is was agreed that all the other meetings had been productive!
What I have learned is the following: 
1) The Contractor’s Executive Officer cannot delegate down and never approaches the necessary department if he has a question – he has always done that.  He must also be a blood relation to the H&S Officer.
2) In the Stakeholder Analysis the occupants of Building 2001 were never identified as important.
3) The Meeting Agenda is rarely a guideline for how the meeting will actually go and recording and publishing minutes (my idea in two of the meetings!) is a good way of confirming what was discussed with everyone involved (except the Executive Officer who disagrees with everything)
4) American meetings are more about donuts and talking loudly then they are for solving problems

We wait in anticipation for the next wave of unhealthy and unsafe submittals to cross our desks with no start to the construction phase in sight…

On the plus side I did get to see a Levy and Pump Station that had been flooded out in North Pennsylvania in 2011.  The river had risen over 30ft after heavy rain and had flown over the levy knocking out the pump house and resulting in the area flooding.  The on site engineers were asking for $1 million from the Corps to raise the pump station up 10ft so that it would not flood next time .  However it only protects some very old houses where everybody escaped unharmed, which the Corps has not seen as essential.  At a time of cut backs I would have to agree.

The river is a 100m to the left.  The pump station and (now broken) generator hut were completely submerged.

The River today. Note the 30ft trees that were swept away in the flood still in the river.  The bridge in the back ground was completely submerged.

This weeks country hits:
Timber! I am falling in love
Truck Wheels in the Moonlight
Roadkill Round Up:
30+ deer (saw a guy parked in the central reservation in rush hour collecting a 2 day old  carcass that he could not have hit and he was not the state clean up team either)
15 racoons
6 Ground Hogs
5 piles of red mush (could have been one deer)
And in other news:
Apart from mass shootings on Mother’s Day, tornadoes in the deep south, girls being found in a house after 10 years of being missing, a $580 million lottery winner and IRS scandals, I am pleased to announce Warrick will be graduating from Kindergarten in a months time, complete with certificate presentation and Mortar Board.  Only in America……

I am also signed up for the Army Ten Miler in DC where 30,000 people with service connections will run round the Pentagon and back early on a Sunday morning in October.  Time for some training…