Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

After coming back from a great holiday in NZ I pretty much expected a complete bridge and was quite surprised at how little had been done. The bridge is very close to complete but when I left on Fri evening there were still the throw screens to install and a fair amount of concrete surface work on the barriers especially where the slip formed barriers meet the sections that had to be hand formed. When I went on holiday there were four very small concrete pours to complete which and `i had arranged and booked everything in which would have only taken a week so I am not sure what they have been doing for the other 2 weeks. As a result I have still been on site a lot more than I anticipated in my final week rather than closing out all the QA paperwork and closing documents such as the ‘red line’ drawings and RATM’s. I have forgotten what RATM’s stands for now but it is simply a spreadsheet that documents all the contractual requirements where I had to write or file the relevant evidence that proves we have met the requirements such as a work lot number or particular photograph.

My last post showed one of the slip forming runs with a missing portion. Well, we did four separate runs of approximately 18-20m and that was run 3 which we did on the morning of the second day. That was simply a product of pour concrete supply by the concrete supplier. The concrete mix was a 10mm slump mix and as such they limit the transport load to 3m^3 per ruck. Throughout the two days even with constant phone calls we had a very poor service to the point where I requested that the project rep came out to visit site. The gap in the barrier was where we were waiting over an hour between loads to the point where the concrete would have gone off in the mould so we had no choice but to break out a section and start agin when the next load arrived. They accepted responsibility and I informed them that I would be putting in a claim to hand form that section which would be back charged to them. When I left for holiday I informed commercial about this but I get the impression it was ignored as the Commercial Manager doesn’t like to rock the boat so close to the end of the project. In my opinion no one especially the supplier wouldn’t have had a problem with this as they fully admitted liability especially when considering other issues we had with them. We were supplied the wrong concrete mix on the first day which was a kerb mix not a type F barrier mix which had 10mm stone rather than 20mm. After I sent it back I argued that this was their mistake and after they checked phone records of the order they apologised but the mix did not work well at first. The first run formed very poorly in the mould with most of the top section missing and having to be formed by hand with a 6 man crew training behind the mould. The subcontractor was blaming a lack of air entrainment within the mix but when I requested the air content of the mix (min of 4%) they said they had no capability to test the air content. The subsequent runs were much better so something changed within the mix. We had a further issue when the supervisor asked one of the excavator operators working nearby to remove some of the excess concrete that had been picked out at the end of run 1. This was now quite hard and as we had a 300mm foundation which had not been separated or saw cut it resulted in most of the barrier cracking along about 2/3 of its length. This meant we ended up breaking out most of run 1 and hand forming in on Dayworks which was expensive.

The roadworks seem to have been pretty slow but were complete when I left aside from street furniture and line marking so it looks like following the Road Safety Audit early next week the road should open next fri before xmas.

I start with SMEC on mon which I am not sure I am looking forward to as it is just going to mean more office work but I am hoping the hours will be more sensible. My commute is certainly a lot shorter so I should be able to bike to work a few days a week. At the moment I have had no official confirmation of how my rent will be paid and I have no car having given back the Ute on Fri. Hopefully I will be able to sort out the details at SMEC face to face with HR as JH certainly don’t seem to be keen to help – I find it ironic that being here to increase my contractual understanding I am with a company that has difficulty in honouring a simple agreement with the RE!