A bit like pulling teeth!
Well, its fri afternoon and I am coming to the end of my second week at the design office and have come to the conclusion already that this is not for me. The office is entirely open plan even the managers are scattered about without any sense of order but it is a pretty soul less place. Everyone seems very focused and confident in what they are doing and it almost seems like an event when someone gets up and goes to the toilet – which is me the majority of the time as I am now back on coke zero to try and get through the next 6 months so I piss regularly!
As for the actual work, on my second day I was given an Invitation To Tender for a rail job and was told it needed to be in on 15 Jan and as the company is taking 3 weeks for xmas that means 6 working days. My first thought was that, thank god I don’t have to design anything yet and maybe this will be a good job to get stuck into and learn about the tendering process. The job was to relocate some 11kV feeders from OHW to undergroud and construct a new switch room and access track. Not a big job, but having thought I was going to the structures team to probably design bridges I suddenly found myself on a rail job tendering for an electrical job. I am actually part of the structures team but within the rail structures team and so this small project landed at my feet. In the end it was such a manic 6 days I am not sure I leaned as much as I was hoping as it seemed to turn into a bit of a phase 1 design exercise scenario! – not as bad as I did go home every evening. It has emersed me into costs again and how a tender is priced which was my main focus as well as pulling in all the relevent specialists to get there input. The tender required about five seperate sub-consultants and the same number internally from SMEC who all had to produce a methodology for their input along with assumptions and exclusions. I have learnt that if you have any doubt in your understanding of the tender documentation or just can’t be bothered to read it all then cover your self my saying exactly what you are providing within the lump sum cost. I was rather surprised at how rushed, or late the tender was issued before it needed to be submitted but I think this was more down to SMEC than the client. I suppose you need to be quite ruthless with the time you allocate to a tender as it is unpaid work with no guarantee of a win. I attended the client site inspection on day 3 still not really knowing what was going on and having had very little time to read the 965 page tender document issued by the client. An electrical engineer from a sub-consutant we were partnering with was going to attend with me but pulled out at the last minute and when I got there I think all the design consultants of Sydney were present. Having chatted to a few of them it became apparent they hadn’t read any of the tender docs and I think one guy was only there because he saw a a queue of people on the street and thought he would join us.
I managed to get the tender together with a few hours before submission and then had to present it to the Regional Manager to justify the price so he would sign it off. In simple terms, the in house costs or Direct Labour Costs as well as the reimbursables (sub-consultant fess) once a certain multiplier is thrown in gives you a contribution percentage. Corporate and regional overheads come in at about 36% total so anything over this is profit. Most jobs certainly in transport over the last year have had to be tendered at about 40% contribution to have a chance of winning and this tender was settled at about 42% with the total at AUS$ 716,000. I think the general consensus was that the price would need to be more like 650,000 to win but the electrical sub-consultant we have used is a little pricey. We just need to wait to see if we get this.
Following from that I have been given a RC structure where the basement column reinforcement has coroded and caused the concrete to break away. My job at the moment is to assess whether the structural capacity of those columns is sufficient. More on that next week I think.
Otherwise, the hours are so far pretty reasonable and I get to drive or cycle in every morning over the Sydney Harbour Bridge which is a pretty good view.
Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog 
Consultancy is much less jovial than contracting, a bit like growing up and entering the adult world, the humour is different…
Do SMEC have a go/no go risk assessment tool for tendering? Do you know what bid to win ratio SMEC work on? I presume the regional ooverheads is an uplift percentage applied to the preliminary costs and local overheads figure. One of my previous employers used 100% costs witha multiplier of 1.2 to reach local overheads which was tendered at x1.7 to provide costs and profit to centre which is just over 40% to centre if my assessment of how SMEC apply their multiplier is right.
On the RC column front first Q is what is the cause of the problem Carbonation? ASR? If there is sufficient residual capacity, what can be done to protect and prevent further issues and will it still be possible to inspect for on going issues. IF insufficient capacity what is the probale solution and how will it avoid the same fate within the design liability period! Enjoy!!
R.