Structural Engineers ______________
This week for me has been somewhat interesting.
The project director for the South Bank Tower, Shaun Tate, has gone on leave for three weeks and the duty seems pretty out the loop with what is going on. Therefore the Major Projects Director for Mace has gotten involved to sort out any problems!
Well, we have a few problems! So today the Major Projects Director sat through a temporary works meeting between Mace, PC Harringtons (sub contractor for the core sliupform), Walsh Group (temp works engineer) and AKT II (the Structural Engineers). Normally there are six of us in our weekly meeting. Today I counted thirteen at the table.
At discussion was the metal plate that attaches the 3 x Macalloy hanger rods (carrying up to 7600kN ULS force between them) to the reinforced concrete core. Now steel to concrete connections are the Structural Engineers (AKTs) bag. They (AKT) are meant to own this. Sadly for AKT they have so much already on their plate they’ve given us no time to sort this out. And by sort this out I mean determine the detail. How will this work? How do we build it! This has meant that instead of sorting the problem out at the appropriate level (meeting of 5) we have everyone at the table (meeting of 13 including the client).
Well the outcome of todays meeting was (thankfully) generally positive. The work I had done this (and last week) to understand the detail of how the rebar (in the wall) between, above, to the side and below the plate interacts with the massive hangers seemed to pay off. AKT ended up having a long list of ‘to dos’. (This includes re-designing, de-conflicting the rebar and providing some direction). The slipform does not appear (as yet) to be delayed any further than the 17 April 14( to depart from Level 30). So all is good.
What I have learnt from this is how work shy and sloppey shouldered Structural Engineers can be!!! Perhaps this is a little harsh. But I am starting to understand the friction of relationships between contractors and designers. Designers are short sighted and ignore the real world problems. Contractors only shimpf that Structural Engineers will not consider the temporary state and only ever design un-buildable structures!!
The outcome is that Mace do not trust AKT. AKT haven’t a clue how we are trying to execute the build so just choose to ignore the issue until it is escalated to such a level that they cannot ignore it! Fun fun…..
Thankfully tomorrow is Friday! My apologies for the long post. Rant over.
Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog 
I’ve had a similar situation on site, with designers thinking that things just happen. The temporary works to install our temporary road being one such situation. Did you get up and poke any of them in the chest to emphasise your point in the meeting? I’m sure that will help in future…
Not quite. A few individuals around the table almost did until the Client piped up!
Probably a bit harsh on the SE. There has always been a grey area of temporary works. And contrats between clientsz\client rep and professional services firms rarely detail the full scope of the services so stuff that might lie close to temporary works design often float somewhere between designer and contractor. It’s a truism that risks lie on such interfaces. It’s just that if anyone steps in on the interface they often get lumbered with those risks – but sometimes the reward does not follow….. nice blog….wouldn’t mind seeing the hangar detail
You are probably right that I was harsh (I did write the blog after a trip to the pub!). A key weakness here is there is no involvement by the CDM Coordinator. The manner with which the Structual Engineers provide us with contructablilty concerns is by a slow drip feed every now and again. When we highlight issues they are so busy with getting everything else together they do not provide any assistance to make changes. All good fun though.
I would be interested to hear any opinion on this from those on Phase 3 given the different perspective they presently have on tendering and the completeness of designs prior to issue.
Is it right to expect a consultant to tender a lowest possible price and negotiate downwards on savings and then issue anything other than minimal design? Usual form is to rectify issues that arise rather than try to provide 100% buildable design on less than a 100% funding. Besides, you could spend hours designing for construction for a contractor to simply choose a different solution so surely better to be only as precise as essential and then fix the bugs that matter?
How to tell if a bug matters: The way you know it matters is that site have whinged about it on at least three consecutive occasions. Why three? because they’ll try to pass everything your way (first whinge) but will get on with it thereafter unless it requires some effort (second whinge) then they’ll think about things and sort them out practically on site where they’re in possession of a more complete understanding of the construction process being adopted but if they really can’t work around it or sort it and it might affect a payment point/performance indicator or programme they’ll start to worry and flag it up again (third whinge – time to act i.e. incur design cost)
Thoughts anyone?
7600kN between 3 bars! Not small numbers, I reckon that’s about 60mm dia each @ 1030N/mm2 and above 50mm they’re not CE marked. Is this going to be a challenge?
I had a similar situation before my foot operation. Our subbies realised there was no design for the penetration of the sheet pile wall for the services. The design engineers Buro Happold said it was the architects problem, they said it was the sheet piling company and no-one took ownership. It wasn’t a temporary works thing, it was on that inside to outside vortex that nobody is interested about. I think we got past 3 whinges from the subbie who had been RFI-ing on Aconex for weeks and our M&E manager decided to call a meeting of all those related to design. I have never seen a room full of so many jack, slopey shouldered architects and engineers who were not interested! I should have made them shoulder press a heavy weight until they got some shoulders before they left the room! In the end our poor old Buro Happold resident engineer took the problem away and came up with a design.