Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

I’m hoping some of last years gang are still half reading this though I doubt it.

I’m currently responsible for doing the site waste management plan.  It involves collecting the mileage travelled by the workforce and deliveries, coupled with water and electricity consumption.  All this is used in support of achieving the required BREEAM rating (but extra stuff is required for that bit too).  This is a nightmare and requires me to trawl through lots of signing in sheets, delivery record sheets and waste transfer notes.  I’m currently thinking about writing a proposal to Osborne Group about commissioning an App for iOs/Android that should take some of the monkey work away from me, I’ve got a quote from a developer for it and will put it to the company in the next couple of weeks.

Out of interest how is all this stuff done on the other UK sites?  (hence the reason some other courses are looking at this as Mike is the only other person still here)

Those of you who care or who are bored enough to flick back through the blogs may remember that there was a requirement to demolish a significant amount of concrete wall on my Block due to the structural engineer not designing the knock out panels for the future louvres.  

What I didn’t really mention as it was a secondary issue was that the face of that wall was built too far towards the outside of the building by about 155mm.  It seems they just read the make up of that section of wall correctly, there is face brickwork here with a cavity behind and consequently just intended to steal some of Southampton on the sly.  Once again assumption got the better of me, it seemed it was no secret that the retaining wall was too far forward and the slab edge too but it didn’t seem that much of an issue.  When it was only this problem nobody seemed that bothered and figured that something could be done, it was only when the future louvre issue came up that demolition was talked about.  My assumption was that because nobody was jumping up and down when the wall was too far forward there must be some kind of clever fix like using a brick slip to save space; so when the wall was removed as previously mentioned on the blog I assumed that they would use the same clever solution to get around the slab edge too far forward problem.  How wrong I was.  The sketches below show what was built, what was designed by the structural engineer and what was designed by the architect.

This doesn’t really describe the full story because it’s only when I looked at the slab edge detail that I realised there was no clever fix and very few clever people.  Below is my reproduction of the slab edge detail comparing the as built section and this sketch shows that with an overall dimension from B10 to the face of the brickwork of 734mm and an as built slab edge of 675mm we only had 59mm to play with which in order to achieve the cavity and the any form of brick would have been impossible.

So more demolition at the cost to the structural engineer as 150mm of slab is cut back and removed across about 24m of construction.  All this against a background of a Project Manager desperately trying to get follow on trades into the area see first paragraph of ‘forward planning optional’ who is slowing up the process by not allowing me to clear the area.  The frame contractor has had a lucky escape here as the as built is different from the as design by WSL, the structural engineer, otherwise the slab cut would have been paid for by them but because WSL have made the first mistake it’s all going on their flick.  Personally I think the as built/as per WSL would have been an interesting argument anyway was there was no section as I have drawn it instead that rather odd arrangement was supposed to have been worked out from the GA below, note the interesting combination of dotted and solid lines all trying to convey different things.

There are other slab edges out there that have been wrongly designed by the structural engineer and are about to be lopped off too, so it’s not a one off mistake.  In another update I’ll try to look at the remediation that follows all this cutting, ends of bars are now exposed to the elements and need fire/water proofing and all the U Bars have been cut off too.  I just need to work out what U Bars actually do and why it’s so important they’re replaced.