Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

This week I have established that the crux of this construction project will not be the temporary works designs, rubbish ground conditions or water, it is going to be one of frustrating logistics, the snakes nest of buried services on the site and getting in each other’s way!  Due to the number of different phases of the Power Station Redevelopment there is an unusual hierarchy of contractors working on the site which I have likened to a Regiment in PPP with Holdfast:

So I see ourselves in Carillion as a Squadron HQ working to achieve the Regiment’s (Client’s) main aim of the development of the power station and surrounding area.  As the main contractor for phase 1 we employ a number of sub-contractors to complete various elements of the tasks.  I liken these to the Troops in a Squadron and the site engineers and project managers are like the Troop Commanders.  We tell them to do something, they then fill out loads of paperwork (risk assessments and method statements) that I check and send back to them red-penned, they get the go ahead to do the job and I check it-just like being a Sqn 2IC again!  They have Black Hat Supervisors who are like the Troop Staff Sergeants, the Banksmen are like the JNCOs and the labourers are the Sappers.  The Contractors (Troops) try and pull the wool over Carillion’s (Sqn SHQs) eyes to get away with minimal work!

The unusual part about this project is that Carillion are also part of the big picture that I class as the ‘Regiment’.  We are just the 1^st part of the redevelopment that will include renovating the power station into retail, offices and residential and the building of an underground station on site.  Therefore the client employs Elliot and Thomas to control site logistics.   They man the security gates, control communal areas of the site generally manage the land.  I liken these to Holdfast for two reasons: the first being that they seem to do all the odd jobs that we used to get soldiers to do; the second being that to get them to agree to anything requires a ridiculous amount of paperwork and they are about as flexible as a piece of concrete!  My Monday morning started with me spending 45 mins trying to negotiate where I could park the vehicles of my GPR surveying team. Despite me asking nicely they were not allowed to park in the space nest to the gate they were surveying near, instead they got sent about 1km around the site, into the muddy groundworks box, through the wheel wash back to 50m from where they started.  Two days later I got a call from their boss to say that we had put a pedestrian barrier ‘on their land’ that I had not filled out a permit request for and London Underground wanted to put a borehole there.  Today I found out it was my land and I was well within my rights to be there!

The rest of this week seems to have been spent organising moving a fence back 3m to fit my HV substation in.  This requires a GPR survey, Network Rail Approval of the risk assessment and method statements, confirmation of Japanese Knotweed removal and the moon to align with Venus and some other stars before it gets done!

And the most exciting part of the week was the unearthing of the big fat f-off pipe.  Shown as a ‘faint’ signal on the GPR survey the boys uncovered this 900mm diameter cast iron pipe:

We then had to wait for Carillion Utilities to come and tap the pipe.  This involves strapping a device which adjusts the pressure to ensure that whatever is in the pipe doesn’t leak out when they then hand drill into the pipe.  This pipe proved to be an empty gas pipe probably from the old gas works the other side of Battersea Dogs Home.  Now able to progress with the already 1 week behind schedule drainage they broke through the old gas pipe shown in the left hand side of the picture just in time to find his little brother hiding underneath!  My money is on another disused gas pipe but we will have to wait and see what the experts say as the clock ticks and the drainage slips even further behind time!

P.S.  My other key learning points this week have been:

-No longer can you trust people to not get hit by a big truck even though you got taught how to cross the road at around age 5.  Pedestrians must be enclosed in steel barriers that need calculations to ensure they don’t get blown over in the wind, tsunami or other predicted natural disaster.

-Workers will mutiny if they don’t have the following: a smoking shelter within a 5 min radius of their work area (which also required temporary works design and a lift plan despite being a 4 man lift), a toilet with hot running water also as close and a moon on a stick.

-I should set up some kind of testing and inspection business because you can make a lot of money out of it.  So far I have 3 different people getting paid to come and look at the foul water drains we are installing, all doing exactly the same thing!