Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

The last couple of weeks have been dogged with industrial action, which has resulted in the loss of around 4 days work. The dispute is centred around a change to Australian legislation governing the access of union officials to site. Previously, a union official could access any site if they deemed that there was an urgent safety issue, and demand that work cease until the issue had been resolved. This translated to a carte blanche for union officials to wreak havoc on construction programmes, and chuckle while site management frantically tried to replace a first aid box that had a broken seal, for example.

The new laws require union officials to give 24hrs notice to site management, so as to enable them to rectify the issue without having to stop work on the site. This has gone down badly with the unions who are doing their best to beat major companies (as far as I know, this is not restricted to John Holland) into flouting the law and allowing immediate access. The tactics to date have been to call 2 hour union meetings, which they are entitled to do. The clever part is that they will hold meetings for select trades at different times of day so as to ensure there are never enough of the right people on site to pour concrete.

There have been several incidents of union officials turning up on site and gaining access before John Holland staff have a chance to respond. The JH head office response has been to employ an Ex Columbian Army Commando to guard the site – hence the blog title, fighting fire with fire. Whilst he really does look the part as a visual deterrent, it would be severely frowned upon if he were to employ his ninja skills to scalp a union rep at the entrance to site. As such has been instructed to call the PM if he sees anything. His presence has also antagonised the union members; an outcome I think most of us could have foreseen.

Switching subjects, I was hoping for some advice from the floor. As we are about to pour one of the level 5 slabs, the Building Code of Australia suggests that we are obliged to have a fire hydrant system and fire hose reels in place and working up to level 3. Several JH staff members are concerned with the security of the fire hose reels, particularly as we are in the middle of a Uni campus and the little scrotes have accessed site after hours on several occasions. I only need to think back to the time Steve Crosby-Jones emptied out a 30 storey tower block of students after a couple of beers at Cov Uni, to gauge the likelihood of turning up to a flooded site in the morning. This site isn’t particularly hard to access so the security of the hose reels will need to be localised. It will also need to allow easy access to use the hose if required. Does anyone have any experience / suggestions that they could share?

I have included a picture of one such fire hose reel to help you visualise the problem.

Fire Hose Reel on Level 2

From the other side

Demonstrating the current protection.

In other news, we had a work trip to see the Brisbane Broncos play the Gold Coast Titans on Friday. Those who know me will appreciate that a fair few beers were consumed, particularly as it turns out that my boss is even more of an animal than I am! The result was me doing the plank on a kerb stone whilst trying to get rid of hiccups at 3 in the morning.

The plank!