Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

This week as seen good progress for the first 3 days as the steel for the southern face of abutment wall A was placed. The vertical bars are over 9m in length so we hired in a 55T crane (the project has 20T & 25T Franna Cranes on permanent hire which are ‘booked’ through the superintendent) as the reach on a franna was not enough. It did look rather odd seeing a 55T crane lift 3 reo bars at a time so they could be placed vertically aginst the scaffold and secured but we required for the reach only. We also managed to form up and pour the wall sections of the outer deflection walls so two are complete with the wall for the third and the base for the fourth (currenty using that area as a laydown area) outer portions hopefully being poured next week.

We had a site walkabout with the rail saftey manager (a huge guy called Dragan) as we are looking at the alterations we will need to do to convert the site. This mainly consisits of alot of fencing and knowing who the Protection Officer (PO) is for that section. The PO is our link to the rail issues that may affect us. He will brief us in the morning on what work and dangers are present for that day and if we inform him if we need to gain access to the rail corridor. As our plan is to install the PSC beams early to let the rail team come through the site without us having to work within the rail corridor this should make our lives a little easier.

Thw CSR has finally been laid across the fron of abutment B and concrete encased and the backfilling complete so that we can finally start erecting the scaffold on abutment B a week late. We would havss started sooner but rain on thu and fri washed out the remainder of the week – quite literally. I am looking forward to pouring the abutment walls as it will be a chalenging pour but also because we finally get away from the ground for a while before we move back to the wing walls and retaining walls. It will probably rain on a daily basis by then.

Other challenges in life at the moment involve dealing with a 10 month old boy who suddenly decided to start crawling a week last wed. Since that day he hasn’t stopped moving and you really do need eyes in the back of your head – or you need to contain them! Decidied to pop down to Bunnings (B&Q) and buy a baby containig kit which has helped. Changing a categroy 5 pooey knappy on a little boy that will not stay still is probably one of the hardest tasks in life!