Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

So, having had mixed feedback on Part 1, I will forge ahead with Part 2….

The Project

Comprised of 3 Lots; Lot 1 – additional works to the plant room in a neighbouring building to provide chilled water AC to the new buildings; Lot 2 – a 6 storey high-tech arts and dance building with acoustic sound studios; Lot 3 – the renovation of existing heritage military barracks into a student arts centre. An AUS$60 million project with intricate architectural detail, a lot of off-form white concrete, acoustically isolated studios and state of the art AV systems.

From what I have heard of other projects, there are advantages and disadvantages to being on a relatively small project. In the time I have been here, I have been able to develop a sound understanding of the services for all 3 Lots, and have been immersed in the structural, facade and finishes aspects of the project as well. The amount of off-form concrete means that there are vast numbers of cast in conduits that are later used to carry power and communications cables, and the accurate location of cast in penetrations for services is vitally important given the exposed concrete.

Perhaps the negatives are that there is not the extent of different services in this project compared to those you would find in a larger project (e.g. a hospital). For example I have had nothing to do with HV power; something I know Ollie has been heavily involved in at the Perth Childrens Hospital.

Being in a small team (c. 16 people) in one site shed means that I have really got a good feel for the politics behind decisions made and the contractual ‘game’ that is played out between subcontractors, head contractor, client and consultant.

The Project Team

The basic team org chart is shown below. The team has changed considerably over the last 8 months with all bar 3 of the project team members changing over. The only team members who have survived from the start are the PM and my services colleague. Some of the turnover im sure can be explained by the uncertainty over the future of John Holland (JH). They are up for sale and the buyer is as yet unknown. Nobody knows for sure if the buyer will keep the building side of the business. There is also a lack of work in Queensland; with a couple of other projects finishing up in the coming weeks, we are soon to be the last JH building project in Queensland. There are more projects in the pipeline though, i’m told.

The military equivalent of the foremen would probably be somewhere between a Cpl and a SSgt depending upon experience. They drive the subcontractors on site, but rely upon the engineers to ensure the necessary design information is available and to resolve issues as they arise, such as services clashes. I was surprised to find that there are actually no ‘proper’ engineers (either chartered or with an engineering degree) on my site. We are referred to as ‘Pretengineers’ by the foremen. My PM has got to where he is from being a chippy and the Safety Manager is an ex Australian Army RSM.

The dynamic has not been at all what I expected. On my site the foremen run the show and the engineers do the administration as required. This, in my opinion, makes the team very reactive rather than proactive, particularly as the Senior Project Engineer resigned making it harder to gather the engineering team to do any forward planning.

Roles & Responsibilities

Despite the lack of knowledge of drawings and general terminology, responsibility came quickly. My primary responsibilities are below with a rough percentage of my day allocated to the task.

• Services Co-ordination Meeting – With the services trades still very much clearing up design issues and generating shop drawings in the early weeks, I took responsibility for running the weekly services coordination meetings. At this stage the meeting was attended by each of the services Project Managers; Electrical, Mechanical, Hydraulic, Fire and AV Systems. The principal aim was to provide a forum to discuss clashes and design issues identified during the shop drawing process. In the last 2 months, the meeting has become more of a site coordination meeting between services and finishes trades with attendance primarily at the site supervisor level. (5%)
• Managing Services Shop Drawing Reviews – The specification documents call for certain shop drawings to be submitted to both the Architect and Consultant for review. These need to be chased, and tracked, a deceptively complex task given this involves in the region of 400 drawings from 5 trades, each of which may need to be revised and resubmitted anything up to 6 times.  I developed the spread sheet below to capture the status and relevant Aconex correspondence numbers. When I arrived on the project we were probably about a third of the way through the process. (20%)

• Services Correspondence – Responding to requests for information from the subcontractors. I have nothing to reference against, but I’m told that this job had an unusual amount of incomplete design. Throughout the shop drawing process and during install, these gaps in the design such as areas on ‘hold’ and missing set-out for services have generated a significant number of RFI’s, each of which need checking (to ensure we definitely don’t have the information) before they are sent on to the Client / Architect (as the lead consultant). I have no idea how this compares to other sites and would be interested to know, but I have sent over 200 RFI’s to the client / lead consultant (the other services engineer around 480), and nearly 1000 other related correspondence. The project uses Aconex to track correspondence which is pretty good once you work out how to use it. I did spend the first couple of months tracking correspondence through a spread sheet though, before I got the hang of the software. (40%)
• Quality – Managing the services trades ITP’s. This involves checking cast in conduits and penetrations in slabs before they are poured and getting trades signatures on the ITP. The same checks must be carried out before walls and ceilings are closed up. Each trade should then provide a copy of their own ITP as an annex to ours. As you can imagine, this is not top of their priority list. There is also a requirement to understand what the specification documents call for so as to check the trades are not taking short cuts to save a buck. (10%)
• Checking Variation Prices – Ensuring subcontractor claims for variation costs are legitimate and checking the prices against the schedule of rates. This can be time consuming as subcontractors will regularly chance their arm at recovering costs that do not constitute a variation and are quick to jump on the fact that due to our high staff turnover, we struggle to retain information on previous conversations etc. As such time is spent trawling through correspondence, meeting minutes and drawing revisions to determine where cost should lie. (5%)
• Safety – Various site safety requirements such as routine hazard inspections, reviewing subcontractors safe work method statements, issuing concrete penetration, excavation, isolation and hot works permits and periodic reviews of the Activity Method Statements (AMS). (5%)
• Clash Resolution – On site resolution of small clashes that are not design related. Usually takes some diplomacy as each trade thinks the others should move their services around them. (10%)
• Occasional Tasking – Researching and delivering solutions to problems such as ensuring sufficient fire hydrants are installed to maintain fire code compliance during construction and developing a solution to providing temporary ventilation through the building once the façade is installed. (5%)

The Routine

• Site opens at 0630hrs – arrive at work.
• Get a brew and quickly check last nights emails.
• An early site walk, which will inevitably generate safety or clash issues to be resolved.
• Deal with correspondence and chase outstanding RFI’s
• Another site walk.
• Team meeting.

This should lead on to Part 3 where I will try and summarise key lessons….