QUT CIP 2 – Blog 1
Well despite only having been on site for a couple of weeks, I feel like i have enough to warrant my first blog.
Project. A $60m contract to build a creative industries precinct for the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The project is to construct a multi-purpose education facility comprising of teaching spaces, office accommodation and specialist teaching studios for the creative arts faculty (music, dance, drama and visual arts).
How the finished building should look.
The project comprises 3 Lots; Lot 1 – an upgrade to the existing plant room in another QUT building, to provide sufficient additional output for the new buildings; Lot 2 – a new, high tech, six storey building containing dance studios, study areas, research and support facilities etc; Lot 3 – the restoration of three heritage listed single level timber buildings and the construction of a single level building, all to house a visual arts facility. Ultimately the building will act as a hub for the hundreds of lycra clad hotties you currently find around Brisbane.
Environmental Issues. As an added complication, the site needs to achieve 5 stars under the Green Building Council of Australia’s (GBCA) Greenstar initiative, which places restrictions on the build in 9 areas; management, indoor environment quality, energy, transport, water, materials, land use and ecology, emissions and innovation. One of my tasks to date has been to ensure that the electrical cable schedule for the build complies with the PVC best practice guidelines – fortunately I had a visit from KY last week so I could draw on his vast knowledge of all things PVC!
Contract. The contractual setup has John Holland Group as the principal contractor under a construct only contract. The work is all being done by sub-contractors so John Holland Groups role is essentially coordination. At the minute, as we are still building the structure and not yet installing services, it feels like John Holland Group is just passing messages between the sub-contractors and the design consultants (via the architect and the project superintendent). I’m sure we will start to add more value when we start installing the services in the next few weeks.
Team Composition & Structure. As we are co-ordinators on the project, the team is a small one with just 4 site engineers reporting to a senior engineer, 3 site foremen who report into a site manager and a 2 man commercial team reporting to the commercial officer. The dynamic can be challenging at times as the structure has the foremen and engineers in separate reporting chains. There are frequent communication frustrations between the foremen, who seem purely interested in pushing the programme and getting ahead of time, and the engineers, whose responsibility is it to ensure adequate checks are carried out before each concrete pour and to ensure arse covering the paperwork is in order. Neither the organisational structure, nor the site manager (an ex-foreman), force the foremen to keep the engineers updated on programme changes. As such there will be an almost daily unplanned scramble to get inspections done and paperwork signed. My attempts to get both parties to update progress/changes on a whiteboard on a daily basis have made some improvement to this, albeit reluctantly on most parts.
Subcontractors. I will wrap up this blog with a picture I took at an off-site inspection of some electrical kit I went to. I’m not sure what the orange box in the background is, but the young lass in the foreground is the electrical design consultant. Not bad!
Main Switch Board Inspection
Social. It’s pretty rubbish out here as you can imagine. I’ll just post a couple of pictures of the horrors I have had to endure.
Playing bowls with Pete at my local club. Cooking shrimps on the barbie with KY.
Driving my Ute on the beach. The missus making me touch the top of a mountain!
I’m on leave now for a week as the site is closed for the week between Easter and Anzac Day, so will blog after the CI’s visit.
Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog 
Hi Ben, good to hear from you. It all looks like you’ve settled in well. Brisbane sounds like a nightmare having to avoid all the ‘lycra clad hotties’.
Interesting contract arrangement in place. It will be worth your while going through previous blogs looking at the Crossrail stuff (Beszant, Burton, Crosby-Jones and McGuirk) and chatting with the guys to establish any lessons that you could adopt on your site.