Same old, same old
Everyday and with every new part of construction the same issues keep popping up, no power (or faulty generator), water logged floors or roofs, inadequate storage or working areas, unscheduled deliveries. Occasionally a real problem rears its head but that is usually squirreled away to the designers before we have a chance to really look at it. I’m getting to saturation point on what I feel I can gain from the site, it is becoming very frustrating, I have asked to spend some time at head office with the pre-construction team to see how the bid process can be got so wrong as it has been in Southampton.
I do find myself wondering whether I’m completely missing the point, one of my early posts ‘A Building is a By-Product’ talked about the fixation of winning prizes like Considerate Constructors but what I wonder now is whether cashflow really is more important than product or profit even. This project almost certainly won’t be profitable, it won’t be on time (massive LADs) and has been beset by design and management issues from the outset and yet nobody seems to be getting angry about it, especially the levels above contracts manager who you would expect to be getting nervous. The only solution that I can guess at is that there is some clever back room processes that can get ‘Sad Ken’ across the line ahead of the field in the 1530 at Chepstow and turn a profit by some miracle. People that are clever with contracts any views?
One thing that has kept me interested recently is being given pretty much the entire responsibility for bringing ALL the utilities onto site in the same week on the same road. A planning condition is for a single road closure for service installation (in reality we pushed our luck with the transfer beam and got away with it) and so starting next week in a stretch of road about 80m long I will overseeing the circus that will see geothermal heating, gas, mains water, HV electricity, BT and the foul water system all connected in 5 days. In sorting some of this stuff out I’ve had an interesting blast from the past, it started off a little like this:
PM ‘You need to either speak to Keith Olbury or Frank Dickinson at Lanes for Drains’
Rich’s internal monologue ‘No it can’t be even with that name’
Later on the phone man with distinctive squeaky Yorkshire accent ‘Hi is that Rich’
We talk business and then I say : ‘You’re not a former Royal Engineer are you?
‘Yeah I was’
‘A plant operator?’
‘Yeah, why?’
‘I thought it might be you’
‘Where do you know me from then?’
‘I was your Troop Commander in Tidworth’
‘Really?’
I guess I made a real impression then.
Yes Frank Dickinson was a particularly poor LCpl in my Troop that I was now relying on for a service in the real world, both of us with ‘manager’ in our titles, oh dear.
Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog 
Good to see lip service hasn’t been paid to the E&M scope!
I’m with you Rich. It is fairly similar here, that we are behind programme, over budget and the solution seems to be to sack a few people and then promote from within the ranks to fill the role. This tends to lead to yet another role that has somebody too inexperienced to do the job, and so the trend goes on…..
One of the ‘clever’ backroom options here was to change the numbering of the slabs so that the client thinks we hit the payment milestones! With thinking like that, who needs s%*t subcontractors!
In my experience yes, sometimes contracts are taken and run to keep a workforce employed. You see it on ops, where contractors will take work (at minimal, but still signigificant, profit) iot prevent having to de-mobilise if they think there is more work coming. There may also be the thought that the marketting boys will be able to turn perception of the job into a glorious success iot gain further work in a similar field (the contracting version of the supermarket lost-leader).
The other side to this (the positive spin to take to CPR) is being able to debate engineering verses management of construction. Cue John Moran ….
The geothermal bit sounds interesting Rich, any chance of some additional information? Type of system, abstraction depth, rate and temperatures, reinjection method etc?
Mark. Rather than a poor answer I’ll do something on here in the near future as it will feature in tmr3. In brief there is a 1.7 km deep borehole by the docks, the water comes out around 76°C. The temp is topped up by CHPs at their site and the result is pumped stood Southampton feeding various locations notably the civic Centre and hospital. The water should return around 50 degrees but normally goes back at a higher temp. The system feeds both our domestic hot water and heating with heat exchangers on every third floor. The system enters through the plant room in my block and is then pumped around the other two blocks thereafter.
Thanks Rich, I’ll look out for your post and TMR.