Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

It has been a pretty slow week this week due to rain and wind which has resulted in approximately 2 days work on site. This is a severe blow as it means that the milestone pour of South Block, Ground Floor, Zone 2. There were far too many issues with the slab that it was decided to switch guns onto zone 6 as a more realistic target and hope that the client is feeling lenient and gives JHG the payment or at least, part of it. In my opinion, JHG has a terrible reputation with the Clients Representative so I expect them to just laugh and close their wallet. We will see what happens.

There have been 2 events of interest this week.

1. Column J(-3385)-16 is a 1000×400 rectangular column that sits along the side of the car park ramp and couples into the ramp slab. It also holds the ramp upstand wall reinforcement. The issue arose when it was discovered that the N28 couplers would not allow a threaded bar to follow the change in angle of the ramp wall. The options investigated were:

>  Install straight threaded bars, then heat and bend to angle. (Structural engineer wouldn’t allow it as it was assessed that it would degrade the steel and there would not have the required bending diameter specified in Australian standards.)

>  Short threaded bar with either short cog to allow it to be screwed in whilst formwork is in place. This would either have another coupler on the end, or if that wasn’t possible, a straight bar that could be welded to another straight bar to achieve the required lap. This option was dismissed as the manufacturer could only thread or couple a minimum of 250mm from a bend, and this would take the bar outside the perimeter of the wall.

>  Break down the column to the underside of the ramp soffit and reinstall starter bars through the existing reinforcement. Messy and expensive, but appears to be the only way.

As it happens the weather has held back play this week, so nothing has been done to date. In my opinion, from looking at the structural design, the scheduler has interpreted the drawing incorrectly, scheduling couplers instead of starter bars. The bars were installed in line with the schedulers marked up drawing by the steel fixers, and the adjacent wall to the column formed up by the formworkers. To remediate this issue I have had to reorder the steel and column links (that will be destroyed during the breaking down of the column) and write site instructions for the steelfixers and formworkers to complete the work. This all has to be backcharged to the steel supplier who schedules the steel. It’s a fairly woolly reasoning especially as the steelfixers should have known better than to install reinforcement that wouldn’t work, and the engineer should have been more aware of the future intent with the column (But JHG won’t backcharge itself and it would be awkward to backcharge both the steelfixers and steel supplier so the scheduler gets it). It felt pretty dirty doing it as I have built up a good relationship with all parties, but it had to be done to get the situation moving.

The 2^nd issue this week was the Health and Safety Representative for the formworker being sacked. The first that the South and Centre JHG teams heard about it was at the 0645 pre-start in the morning when the boys were all fired up and ready to mutiny. The root of the problem is all very childish as you would expect. Essentially the Northern formwork company, Crown, won’t let the Southern formwork company, West Coast Formwork, sit in the same lunch room as them (or vice versa). There has been a lot of playground tactics such as moving bags out into the rain, and name calling, but it ended in the WCF HSR heading down to the lunch rooms and essentially offering everybody out for a good old dust-up. Unfortunately for him, when he ‘threatened’ one of the rooms the JHG H&S manager was there and immediately had him removed from site for threatening behaviour.

I think JHG handled this situation particularly badly. Sacking a senior employee of a subcontractor and not at least briefing the JHG teams prior to the morning prestart. It was a difficult meeting as the rumour mill amongst the boys was working overtime and we had no information. You can’t reason with a mob. The situation ended with a meeting with senior JHG managers and WCF managers to no change. Relationships are now further tarnished.

In other news, we spent yesterday at a traditional Australian ‘Christmas in July’ party – strange, but good to have a hearty roast at this cold time of the year, and even more strangely just attended a first birthday party for a dog! If it wasn’t for the beers and BBQ I would not have gone. Still feel slightly dirty though.