Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

The excavation of the shaft is well under way. The Sub contractors (Barhale) have continued to fall behind schedule for a number of reasons, mostly falling foul of the detail within the contract. According to their project program, they were supposed to have excavated to the lower ring beam at 10m below the capping beam by Friday. However, as of Friday, they had only achieved 7m depth. Firstly, this was due to the shaft piles allowing water to seep in-between the male and female piles. Secondly, it was due to the excavator not having the correct fire suppression systems in place. Thirdly, a Compensation Event Notice (CEN) was issued to them as they were overfilling the Muckaway trucks by up to 3T.

However, we (BFK) have begun to fall foul of the contract detail between Crossrail (CRL) and ourselves. They have issued us with a number of Early Warnings and CEN’s. Most of this has been down to the quality procedures (or lack of) that BFK have been implementing. As such I have now become the ‘Quality Representative’ for the site at Fisher Street. As I have mentioned before in previous blogs, each material used in the project must be approved by CRL and each significant component has an Individual Inspection and Test Plan (ITP). The shaft excavation is using a Sprayed Concrete lining (SCL) method and therefore a lot of the assurances required for CRL are obtained by the continuos testing of the concrete used in the spraying.However, it seems that the testing plan, detailed in the concrete ITP, have been ignored and therefore there is no way of demonstrating the quality of the concrete. Luckily for us this situation has not been replicated at Fisher Street but both Bond street (BOS) and Tottenham Court Road (TCR) sites have fallen foul of the testing.

In order to get a better understanding of the CEN and the Early Warning process, I organised a presentation from one of the contract managers. The presentation was extremely interesting. The NEC option 3 contract, used between us and CRL, has been modified in a number of areas to achieve CRL’s goals. The 900 variation orders that have now been issued by CRL have not had quotations associated to them. So when it has come to increasing the target price of the contract there has been some serious arguments. In order to regain the money that CRL are losing in the increased target costs, they have been issuing large quantities of CEN’s. This has resulted with BFK attempting to use clause 60.1 of the NEC to get out of any compensation payments. This entire field of the project has been really interesting, after a bit more investigation I was invited for drinks with the Company that has been arbitrating between CRL and BFK. It turned into quite a heavy drinking session with the CEO and deputy CEO on Concordia Consultancy, very interesting.

Back on site, there has been some serious progress, however in the office the rifts are growing more than ever. Alejandro, the Spanish Agent, looks like he is about to get the sack. He was moved here from TCR where he was a sub agent and has not really made the transition from one role to the other. The sub agent on site, Lyndoon, appears to be universally hated within the CRL project, and is refusing to work Shift timings. As a consequence the other subagents are having to pick up the slack. I have offered to assist but Im unable to act as a sub-agent, due to the terms of the contract.

Anyway, I am enjoying the work more than ever and I feel I am getting a great deal of benefit from the secondment.