Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

On my arrival back to London on Sun night, I realised the city smells.  A weekend of fresh sea air and sunshine is soon forgotten when you appear into the smog of Clapham Junction!  Again Monday started well with a visit from the Carillion Surveyor for a bit of QA on the drainage.  He was able to find that some of the surface water drains are up to 500mm out of place in plan, just what you need when you still have water, HV and Comms to get in there!  The next visit was from the Scottish and Southern Electricity (SSE) Engineer who is coming to fit the HV equipment.  I was pleasantly surprised to hear him say the last week’s banana shaped HV slab was actually alright, but not so happy when he told us the other temporary sub station was meant to have cables coming out of the back.  Typically this was the one that was right up against the Network Rail fence that took me about 2 weeks to get the fence moved and construction approved.  Cue some quick thinking, a re-arrangement of the layout, a quick design change and another call to the Network Rail guy to get him to accept the change asap.  Today the slab was poured and so far is looking much better than the first one!

This week’s most time consuming job has been checking RAMS: Risk Assessments and Method Statements.  Each person that comes to work on site must submit the RAMS to be checked by Carillion.  Today I must have spent about 2 hours sat with the SSE Engineer trying to explain what our M&E manager meant by making his RAMS site specific rather than 71 pages of his ‘how to install earthing’ instruction manual.  We now have some workable paperwork that complies with Carillion’s standards.

I have also established that sub-contractors are a cross breed of car salesmen and lawyers.  They try to convince you that what they are offering is great and just what you wanted, despite being totally turd that a 10 year Sapper could do blindfolded.  They are also there to totally undercut other car salesmen and they promise to give you the best offer.  They are like lawyers because everything that is said is taken as gospel and words can be twisted to suit them.  Today’s 4Cs meeting turned into a great debate about how they were going to put a footpath along where the drainage has got to go.  There isn’t enough room for the barriers to be 2m from the edge of the excavation and any temporary works will require a design from our Carillion Temp Wks Designer who will probably have a 2 week turnaround.  If I am not too busy reading RAMS as I spend my Saturday working I might see if I can design a barrier myself and send it to him to see what he thinks.

The highlight of my week was definitely being put in charge of the ‘Holes Register’.  Initially I was convinced that it was a wind up but I then found on the system the ‘Daily Hole Inspection Sheet’.  I had already warned off the subcontractor that each manhole cover needed a ‘Hole Below’ warning painted on and I was impressed to hear that it had been done.  On my wander around to check progress on the drains I spotted one of the painted covers to find a knackered piece of ply wood saying ‘Blow Hole’.  After laughing my head off in the middle of the site I sent the sub-contractor this great picture and Carillion’s guidance on how to cover a manhole.  I can now understand the need for such strict H&S rules!

Thankfully I only have until Wed morning on this task until my next foot butchering session in the afternoon.  Roll on 2 weeks on my couch at home by the seaside (not that I can get to the sea on my crutches).  I will mostly be watching back to back Sherlock episodes and Pulp Fiction so I can understand John’s joke!

Here’s the time lapse for the project so far.  It’s John’s dream job: sheet pile cofferdam, props, wailings, dewatering, excavating, piling mats and piling!  My drainage are the ones digging a straight line by the railway arches!

http://vimeopro.com/user25873713/battersea-power-station-progress-videos