Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Well I haven’t blogged for a while as I have been at home feeling sorry for myself after my other foot operation.  I have now progressed from crawling and hopping to now hobbling around the flat and I am being a bit more productive.  The first week involved co-codamol induced tiredness and my foot feeling like it was full of molten lava so I didn’t achieve very much except a few odd jobs and lots of watching Grand Designs, Homes Under the Hammer and Building the Dream.  Just to prove I haven’t been off skiving here is the foot after a week:

My highlights of the week were the arrival of the postmen and Ocado delivery guy.  One of which bought me a very exciting get well present from a friend.  Helping to maintain my engineering practical skills and entertaining me for 2 evenings and 1 morning, I give you the Lego Campervan:

Hours of entertainment and great attention to detail inside it.  I am glad the age was 16+ as I was surprised how long it took me!  The engineering challenges were organising my stores area without taking up my whole living room and not lifting it up by the roof which falls off under its self-weight!

I have also been keeping an eye on my Carillion emails and it doesn’t seem like I am missing anything too critical.  The most exciting email has been regarding the banana shaped HV slab.   The plan was to knock the wall to Battersea Park Road down, install a GRP housing on the slab for the substation, insert the substation equipment into the housing and connect the cables.  However, the Battersea Power Station Development Company (BPSDC) who are the client have been unable to knock down the wall as TFL will not let them close the footpath.  The doors of the GRP to the substation  were meant to open outwards to where the wall was but seeing as it is still there the plan had to change.  Scottish and Southern Electric (SSE) have now decided to get a different GRP housing which has 2 sets of doors on each side.  It sounded like a good plan until I read the next email which said that the housing was bigger and would overlap the slab by 400mm!  So the client has requested that Carillion extend the slab to fill the void.   It sounds like it is going to be a time consuming and expensive work around for not being able to knock a wall down when expected.

Tomorrow I am back off to hospital for my X-rays and hopefully I will be off crutches by the end of the week.  If all is well then I will be back to London on Sunday to go back to work on Monday.  It will probably be another 3 weeks before U can get my work boots back on so I will be confined to the office for a while.  I hope to do a bit of talking to the H&S manager and the Environmental and Sustainability person.  I might also try and get a day shadowing the Temporary Works Designer for Carillion who works at their main office.  Are there any other useful things I can be getting on with before they pile my desk with paperwork and tasks that nobody else wants to do?