Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

I’m now on site and all moved into the site office after a brief stay in the temporary office (a bit of a glorified cardboard box). Its been a pretty busy 2 weeks, but the access track is finally going in(see below).

The AMS for piling is now 95% complete and I will be sending it out for the team to review later today. This seems a very good practice to me, as it allows the experience and opinions of others in specialist areas to improve and inform the risk register for each activity. I’m not sure whether conflicting opinions will hinder the document being issued, but as it is a live document I’m hoping not. With a bit of luck it also means the more experienced people can fix my mistakes…. The checklists and other quality assurance documents are finished now and its just the environmental side of things I’m waiting for. The environmental manager still has to get back to me about the Site Environmental Plan (SEP) and how Acid Sulphate Soils will be dealt with. From the GDR its clear the piling will encounter them during the prebore prior to driving the piles, but a plan still isn’t in place for where we will be adding the lime (the treatment requires the soil is on a prepared surface with a low permeability and bunding, the soil be in layers 300mm thick and turned regularly when adding lime).

Budget is being brought to the heart of all issues now, and the PM is making that abundantly clear to all from the start. The access track is updated in cost per day vs output in metres and I will have similar reports to do when my piling and concreting starts. To balance this I’ll hopefully be completing a steady stream of work lots to balance the books and bring some money in.

The first of the custom formwork that has been ordered from China for the pilecaps, columns and headstocks should have been loaded by now, however there was a slight hiccup…. Someone made a bit of a mistake and they only realised when shutting the container door and it wouldn’t close. The forms were 200mm too long for the ISO. Now they’ve had to be cut about 2m back and altered so that they can be butt welded together when they reach site without a loss in strength. The forms themselves are modular to take into account the changes in pilecap size over the bridge length and also the change in angle of the headstocks. I’ve added some of the designs below. The headstock forms sit on what I and a few others think is an overly complicated support system. It relies on 8 tension bars going through each column stressed to 600KN. To me this adds a lot of time that we don’t have spare. A simple stand system that rests on the pilecap would be far faster to install, remove the need for remedial works on the columns and save the time in installing, tensioning and certifying the tension supports. Whats even more mental is a stand system has been designed as a backup! No-one seems to be able to tell me why the tension system is not the backup. I’m also going to have to look at the crane time needed for installation. I want to move the forms in as few pieces as possible (making assembly quicker too), but the weight may be too much for the smaller franna cranes on site. At the moment this is a problem for later next week.

The thermal monitoring of the first concrete block (see pic below) was completed – max temp from all thermocouples was 69^oC, a whole 5^oC under the maximum allowable. This bodes well, as the placement temp was right on the limit (anything over 25^oC will be rejected). However Hanson made such a hash of getting the mix right on the day, with the first slump being 200mm instead of 100mm – prompting a change in the mix design (which had already been submitted to the client) After their lack of interest at this and poor attitude from some of the management I’ve now got a thermal trial going with Holcim. It looks like Hanson might have just lost out on a few million dollars worth of work!

The crocodile that is the sub contract for the concrete pumps is now nearing my canoe, and so I’ll be detailing the scope of works early next week. It looks like this will be left to me which should bode well for ticking off some development objectives.

Words I’ve learnt this week:       Bogums – The Aussie equivalent of a chav or a ned

Dunga – A portacabin or temporary building eg. The site office