Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Noting that it’s been a while since i blogged. I intend to use a number of blogs to comment on what I’ve been doing, using this first one as a general comment on the project progress before highlighting specific engineering issues in the next couple.

This week has seen some significant milestones for the Abercrombie business school, allowing opportunity to reflect on a number of issues.

1. Main Structure Topping Out.

After many months of blood sweat and tears the final concrete pour for main structure of the Abercrombie Business school occurred last wednesday, with a topping out ceremony on Friday Morning, with guests and dignitaries from the university, John Holland and the Army of consultants and architects employed on the job. with a floor plan of 7000 square metres, 6 floors above ground and 3 basement floors and considering the partial deck collapse experienced earlier this year, as well as inclement weather and this has been no small achievement considering the first on ground slab was poured on 17th December last year. That having been said, the project is no running approximately 4-5 months behind schedule.

From a services perspective topping out is excellent news, Largely due to the fact attention and focus for resources will now switch fire to fit out, with access available to all floors expected in a week or so, following the full stress of the top deck and formwork stripping below.

2. HV Substation Structure Handover to Ausgrid (National Grid)

From a services perspective, achieving handover of the HV substation structure to Ausgrid to begin HV fit out has been a personal and services team victory. With superstructure of the business school running so far behind schedule a deal was struck between clients and John Holland team, that if the structure could be finished by the end of September all LDs could be waived. As a result all formwork and concreting resources had been focussed somewhat myopically on structure (and still not achieving the september deadline – LDs are now in negotiation)  , whereas the actual Critical path of the project ran through the substation ‘Power On’ date, in order to achieve commissioning timelines and meet the new extended deadline. Similarly getting the project team to understand that pushing the completion of internal elements of the structure such as Main switch rooms and comms rooms will ultimately cut large chunks of time out of the overall program, allowing staggered handover of comms rooms to the university for their own fit out teams to commission, significantly reducing the deadline to commissioning.

The Internals of the new business school HV substation prior to handover

Main LV switch room

 Main Comms room

3. Variety of project involvement.

While admittedly the bulk of activity has been focussed on structure, that does not mean to say that throughout the bowels of the building Services have not been busy. The scale of the Abercrombie business School project has meant that I have received what I feel is good exposure to a whole range of disciplines Including but not limited to coordinating all the Mechanical, Hydraulic, drainage, stormwater and sanitation, as well as heavy involvement in Electrical, including various H&S policies and Method statements. I have been running the services subcontractors meeting and assessing progress claims for sub contractors, as well as acting as the main services point of contact for construction related issues as well as services related QA and defecting. Fortunately for me, culturally, the project team here have been welcoming, as early on in the job a long serving but relatively junior services engineer left the job, allowing me to step into his role.By my calculation, with accommodation costs taken into account I represent a $150000 annual saving to the project on salary alone.

That having been said, as I’m sure Ben and Ollie have found, early negotiations with the project director over working hours, accommodation costs etc, had to be handled delicately as there is really no passage of information between JH head office and the projects as to what to expect from a PET student. The benefits to this is that following early frustrations you can carve out a direction for yourself. An early interest in BIM has meant hat I have ended up largely taking on delivery of a ‘BIM 360’ solution – BIM Models downloaded to Ipads to allow remote access on site, for defecting and as builting the BIM model, and last week I spent two days with our BIM consultant learning how to assemble the overall design model from the subcontractors designs, publish, clash detect and issue direction to the designers for completion of the 3D design, with a view to me taking on responsibilities for the completion of BIM Coordination for the last few turns of the handle. My line manager seems to be as focussed on my development as contributing to the project, and as a result has arranged for me to shadow the commercial team for a few days later in the month.

Now i have returned to the Blog, my next post will focus on some of the actual engineering issues that I have encountered however I will finish this one by just commenting on how Impressed I was at the breadth of disciplines encountered during phase 1 I have actually received exposure to so far, including the civil and project management aspects. A shortcoming would be Comms equipment and infrastructure, Understanding that in our world the technicalities of such systems will be handled by the Corps Signals, but with the volume of IT systems likely to be encountered a working knowledge of IT infrastructure may be of some use, at the expense of the depth of detail of others disciplines.