Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

TMR 1, some leave, Lizzie not well, the CI’s visit and healthy dose of laziness have all conspired to prevent me from completing a blog for sometime.  

Update Artesian Water – The 2 dodgy men that turned up with big drills and a few bags of cement did manage to stem the flow of the water.  It took a while and wet feet (not mine) but eventually a chemical grout managed to stop the water.  I have to admit I was skeptical right up to the point where the water stopped, it seemed like a very amateurish outfit but it made me laugh to see a Celtic supporting Glaswegian and Rangers supporting N Irishman step out of the same van.  The death of water problems combined with a couple of other long awaited solutions have finally opened up the last part of Block B for construction and by the middle of next week I expect to have a water tight plant room.

The project continues to be plagued with design issues a constant stream of RFIs come in from the concrete contractor, I’m trying my best to get ahead and stay there of the construction process but with more trades on site now I can’t dedicate all my time to structural stuff.  The M&E types are slowly dribbling on to site and dangling a few things from the soffit in my plant room.

I have been conducting all the inductions on site at the moment and because of that handle  a lot of CSCS cards and one didn’t look quite right this morning, apparently the line in fake cards didn’t extend to a fake phone number on the back and eventually it was confirmed that it was a fake card.  Free breakfast care of the contracts manager for Rich!

My last post got us to the point of reaching the excavation depth of the Ring Beam. THis post will go into a little more detail.

Due to the amount of reinforcement of the piles, the construction sequence of the Ring Beam had to be modified. As you can see from the sequence below, the reinforcement in the piles needed to be cut.

However in order to decide how much-needed to be cut a quick calculation was required to see what bond length was required in order to hold the Ring Beam up.

Once the reinforcement requirements for the Ring Beam were calculated, the decision to cut the reinforcement could be made. However although the calculations demonstrated that all the reinforcement was not necessary, the decision was still made that all the reinforcement bars had to be coupled back together, once the SCL had been completed. I am in the process of trying to find out why this decision was made.

The next issue is trying to obtain the 200mm SCL required in the cavity below the piles, where the Ring Beam will sit. There has been several modifications, but it now seems that with design #4 (as seen below) we are managing to get the correct SCL profile.

Trials are taking place as I write, we will see if this construction method works