Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

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.  

Since my last update I feel a little more sane.  There hasn’t been an outbreak of personality in the office but at least I’m kind of getting it a bit more now.

Parson Street Bridge

 What has amazed me on this job has been the amount of preliminary work that goes into a tender submission, I have designed most of the abutment, retaining walls and wing wall at this stage.  Initially I thought this would be unpaid but potentially fee winning work however it seems that this is actually paid work, I’m told that civil work is usually paid tender work as opposed to building structures which sounds like tender work is unpaid.  Where the money for this comes from I can only guess at the contractor who presumably doesn’t get paid for his effort but must spend money on us in order to get a detailed design, in this case Graham.  This is a D&B contract to based on initial design by Atkins with Network Rail as the client.  The Atkins design is pretty much just a drawing with few dimensions on it which makes putting any real numbers to calculations difficult.

Things that have surprised me in this process:

• The volume of publications that are out there relating to all the stuff that I’m working on, for example the CIRIA doc on Mercia Mudstone, PD6694 dealing with traffic loads on bridges and modelling how they act on retaining walls. This is just 2 of the documents outside of the Eurocodes of which I’ve consulted about 4 different sections so far.  The bits that we practised on Phase 1 i.e. putting numbers to this stuff is the bit that the computer does the art here seems to understand where to look for guidance on parameters and conditions, interpreting the ground investigation and knowing what’s possible on site.
• The lack of clear direction, I think I mentioned last week that there seems to be a huge amount of stuff that just isn’t communicated, so happily I carried on doing the models I was asked to do.  I went into a meeting late last week with 2 associate level designers from Ramboll who didn’t have a clear picture of how it would actually be built, the tender process seems to drag a little because there hasn’t been a multidiscipline meeting to start off the process.  Such a meeting would have removed the need for me to design so much sheet piling because the contractor is unwilling to risk sheet pile refusal in the mercia mudstone during a possession.
• The point above is illustrated by me trying to work out the construction sequence and putting together sketches to show the stages.  I was quite surprise by how much was left down to the GEO dept and primarily me.  Ignoring John Moran’s repeated instructions to improve my sketching came back to haunt me slightly yesterday, at least the section technician is putting them onto CAD before they leave the office.
• STR checks on sheet piles.  So far I’ve been instructed to let the structures guys check the BM and SF capacity of sheet piles, which means in reality I’ve only designed the embedment depth.  I thought the Orator would be really ashamed of me at this point so read through some old notes and put together a quick section checker excel sheet.  Whilst this isn’t too thorough at least it gives me a chance to not make a foolish mistake.
• I’ve not seen a real check on my work so far, I’ve just been allowed to get on with it and have been expected to come back if I encounter problems.  An example of this is that at one point I had to assume the deck acted as a prop for the sheet piles, putting an axial load of about 1200kN into it, I’ve highlighted it because I figure it’s probably important to the blokes designing it but nobody seems worried right now.

In other news:  Riding to work this morning was interesting, I fell off about a mile from my house, it happened so fast I ended up in a perfect cycling pose just lying horizontally on the ground.

Wow, this is like pulling teeth.  Apparently nobody in the office got a personality for Christmas so it remains as silent as ever, social interaction is a sin.  

I continue to learn more about sheet piles on a daily basis and have been working on a new rail bridge somewhere in the West Country.  It is currently at tender stage and as seems to be par for the course design information is scant, nothing on the proposed drawings has dimensions some every sketch I’ve done has assumed or approx in brackets after numbers.  Basically I’ve been guessing at it.  I’ve also had to guess at the likely construction sequence too.  The bridge is going to be constructed in an area where Mercia Mudstone is about 2 metres below the surface, consequently the sheet piles won’t drive down into so the sheet pile wall has the structural characteristics of a wind break on a stone beach.  In order to make this thing work it needs to be propped under the finished road surface (the rail currently runs on an embankment and a new road crosses underneath) with RC axial members, the bridge deck itself I think will end up of as a prop too but I haven’t been pointed in the direction of any of the structures team so I’m not sure how much axial load I can put on it yet, I guess they haven’t designed the beams or deck yet.  It would all work fine if you could ‘wish it in place’ as the Orator would say but it’s going to need a serious amount of temporary propping in order to get to the finished product.  This is exacerbated by the fact it’s under a live railway and so work needs to work in a series of possessions.  I’ve done a John Moran favourite and drawn out lots of little sketches of what I guess the construction sequence is going to be.  Each of these stages is then accompanied by a separate file in WALLAP to prove that it works and thanks to Eurocode 7 each one of those is duplicated for both design combinations.  This interesting part thinking about actually doing stuff was this afternoon, the other 10 hours of work so far this week have been horrendous, I still haven’t worked out if these people are actually busy or just very good at looking busy, I can confirm that they are actually quite dull not just pretending to be dull.  Looking down the barrel of another 6 months of this I can safely say I’d rather be going on tour, you don’t need to do AERs on tour.

Sorry I’ve been a little unfair.  One of the principal engineers is just back from 2 months working in the Falklands watching a jack up rig drilling in rock for a new port facility.  He’s spent 2 months in transit accommodation down there and has spent at least an hour of his time whinging about it to anyone who will listen despite being on 20% more money than he would have been on in the UK.  Civvies can be amusing.

Now back after leave, it is time for an update on Phase 3.  I am now working in the USACE Baltimore District Head Quarters Mechanical Design Section and have managed to get my own office complete with window, a perk normally only given to section Chiefs, like my line manager.  So with this excellent start in mind I found out which projects I will be working on.

Caven Point Marine Terminal

This is the USACE New York District hub for their Operations Division to run research on the rivers and sea areas around New York.  On a nice point of land opposite a car recycling plant and the Manhatton skyline (complete with Statue of Liberty) it has a unique position with in the Army Corps. In Nov 12 it was hit by a 10ft high tidal surge produced by Hurricane Sandy.  Although the building withstood the surge all the documentation and equipment in the building was destroyed.  Now a shell with some tools and computers in it, $29 million has been set aside to create a new building to replace the current set up.  This project has a few unusual characteristics.  Firstly USACE is the customer, design authority and project manager and as such there is no contract.  This means that many of the normal contractual issues can be simplified ie last minute changes to designs by the user completed by group consensus,  but does also leave scope for issuses like last minute user changes!  The money is coming from a Federal fund set up to repair government buildings damaged by the Sandy specifically.  So far $6 million has been spent from the awarded $35 million hence our budget of $29 million.  However while we are designing to this budget if another government agency finds they could do with money from this fund the New York District must give it to them.  Consequently there is now pressure to get the money allocated to this project before someone else spends it!  New York District Military Design Branch has requested that Baltimore Mechanical Design Section help out because their own section is over stretched.  We will be providing the HVAC and Fire Protection designs for this building which is currently designed to 35%.  This means the building envelope design is nearly complete but no subsystems have been designed in terms of Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing. Normal procedure would see us comleting a 65%, with most Mechanical design complete, in 6 months and 95% ready to advertise publicly by this time next year.  However the Project Manager now needs a 95% design by mid Feb 14 in order to secure the funding.  This works out well for me as I should get to go through the whole design process (and complete my outstanding UK SPEC competencies) by mid Feb 14.  At the moment we have a blank canvas on the design.  We carried out a recce just before leave, met the design team and the end users who are actually fromthree departments: Support Staff who mend boats and look after the building, the Survey Staff who do the scientific research, and Construction Division who have admin offices there for the civil works programs they run in the area.  The new building must therefore incorporate a maintenance workshop, research labs (basic nothing hi tech) and office space.  The Office and Lab space is now to be raised 10ft above grade so that future events do not cause any damage, with all fittings in the workshop, which will be at grade to get boats in and out, at either 6ft or suspended on retractable mounts.  The building must also meet Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED) and prove to be not only more efficient than the current building but with minimal or positive impact on the environment.  So plenty to think about!

View of Manhattan through the unseasonable weather

The Marine Terminal. Note the rust line on the walls which shows how high the surge was.

The ugliest building I have seen in New York. It is a 1920’s design and is an office block!

Nathan Hale Hall, Building 4554, Ft Meade
Hale Hall was a building belonging to Army Intelligence when it caught fire in Oct 2006.

The top floor was largely gutted and since then the building has been open to the elements.

Hale Hall Today.

Money is now available to get the building renovated and back in use as an administration building. A number of structural repairs will be needed as it still has no roof. It will also require a new HVAC system too. This will be my next project although there is no indication yet of the size of the budget. The initial meetings have only just started on this project so I look forward to site visits in full 4R because of the biological contaminants associated with exposure to the elements (racoon and bird poo!).

And in other news:
The transition to Baltimore has been painless although the commute on the light rail is interesting as Matt Fry alluded too in his blogs. The conversations can be very random! The District Christmas party was a unique affair. Not only was it a dry event, it was held at 1100-1500hrs! The food was a very good buffet Christmas lunch Caroline and I we were honoured to be on the top table next to the District Commander. Here I noticed another difference between the US and UK – the knife as part of your cutlery is very much ceremonial! After food there was reindeer racing, a raffle drawn by Santa (the District Commander) and some party games including one where I was the best dressed Christmas Tree thanks to the military guys in the District.
The weather has been pretty unseasonable with snow prior to and over Christmas and more since New Year. The Polar Vortex is coming tonight with temperatures expected to drop to -16. That might be another snow day!