Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

The final pour of the HQ’s Area F for slab on grade happened today…actually it was supposed to be tomorrow! The concrete subcontractors took it upon themselves to pour the slab – in my view so that they could rush off site finally and start another project down south. I’m yet to get to the bottom of what exactly happened, but as I was about to start to look over the rebar I found the concrete pump vehicle parking up next to me and the concrete crew moving to my area from their last slab pour. Having not seen anyone, I presumed all must have been in place with regards to checks and that maybe I had just missed a beat.  Nevertheless, I continued to check over the steel as the pour started and started to find problem after problem. What then ensued was one of those awkward situtions where the USACE QA guy with the funny accent had to step in and stop 10 grizzly concretors and cause a back up of several concrete trucks. Clearly the commotion and grumbling resulted in the QC manager and various Walsh engineers rushing out to see what was going on. It then turned into a mess of fresh concrete being dug out, formwork being replaced, and concretors swearing at each other trying to rectify errors I kept raising – Joe, I can sympathise! Problems, to name but a few, were as simple as:

1. Top rebar not being tied down.
2. Top and bottom rebar having clearance from formwork as little as 1cm (should be 2” = 5cm)
3. Laps not being tied together.
4. Rebar seats having been crushed causing a spacing of, at worse, 2cm between top and bottom rebar (slab thickness – 25cm)

Thoughts….

– Only one external QC guy is employed to QC all concrete, cementitious material and rebar across the whole site. He believed the pour was happening tomorrow and intended to check the rebar this morning with me; this meant that when the concrete trucks turned up, he couldn’t check over the steel and was pulled away to do slump checks on the incoming concrete. To add to his confusion he was trying to QC the grout being used for masonry. It is clear to see that QC is starting to slip off the agenda as contractors rush to make up time, and QC is not a deciding factor when scheduling works that overlap – IT SHOULD BE!  QC employment and scheduling needs to be thought through cleverly – many a day he has nothing to do, and is there purely because contractually he has to be.  This is crazy and I feel his presence is starting to become a box ticking exercise!

– I read an interesting article about ‘QC and continuous education: providing tools for contractors to make ethical decisions’ – BLUF how HR depts need to employ QC workers by personality type, by using tests such as Myers-Briggs in the interview phase, to ensure that QC workers are capable of making ethical decisions.  Today was case in point –  Walsh’s QC manager told me he had walked the rebar this morning (he was clearly aware that the pour was happening); that was before I then showed him the errors.  Hoping he would then rectify the problemsand relieve me by directing the concrete sub-contrators, he limply tried to stop the concretors pouring concrete but then just shrugged his shoulders when they couldn’t hear him…I then had to wade in again.  In addition, the external QC checker should have had the balls to raise the issue straight away to the QC manager; if I hadn’t have turned up, the pour would have just carried on!

Never a dull day…