Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Well this week escaped the sleepy hollows of the New Forest to head back to the Powerstation to host a group of RE Senior and Junior NCOs on a H&S site visit.  They are deploying to the Falkland Islands to construct a concrete pad foundation for a radar station being constructed by 39 ER.  This was part of their pre-deployment training and an opportunity to see the H&S principals learnt in the classroom at Chatham in practice.  I took the group round with my old mentor Richard and the ex-Grenadier Guards H&S guy who had started working at Battersea just before I left.  I was pleased to say that they had actually made progress since I left and it was interesting to stand on the 8^th floor overlooking the river.

As the group will be mostly working on construction of a large concrete slab, I concentrated the tour on the concrete pouring aspect of work.  I showed them the area where Byrne Bros were preparing the re-bar for a large floor slab pour and I took the time to highlight the quality control aspects such as checking cover, bar diameter, spacing, formwork, etc.  Later in the afternoon we were able to see the team pouring the slab and the group were able to take away a number of points to bring up with their chain of command.  They noticed that the thick work gloves that they had been issued would not be suitable for the intricate task of wiring together rebar and that paper suits would be essential for concrete pouring even though the QMs department has deemed it too expensive.

The group would also be installing drainage so I explained the Carillion policies on permits to disturb the ground and safety in excavations.  I took them to view the final processes of the infamous micro-boring that has finally connected the foul drainage to the Thames Water trunk main.  As I left Battersea they had just uncovered that the trunk main was too close to the Battersea Park Road bridge for them to retrieve the microboring machine.  The team from Barhale ended up having to recover it from the Network Rail arch that runs underneath road.  They constructed a steel girder gantry (see picture) over the reception pit to recover the machine and push it out of the arch using a miner’s railway track.  Thames Water would not allow them to tunnel directly into the old Victorian sewer using the machine so the last few meters were completed using a traditional timber heading with soil grouting and de-watering.  The total cost of the operation is now likely to exceed over £1m and is almost 4 months later than the planned completion date.

I think the day has been an extremely worthwhile trip and I felt that the H&S tour was a good opportunity for me to remind myself how much I have experienced and learnt on the placement.  The guys were astounded by the scale of the project and they have taken away some good ideas to include within their pre-deployment training.   I think we should encourage more trips like this for the artisan trades back in units to learn more about industry standards and large scale engineering projects.

Back at the ranch in Poole I have been plodding on with some breakwater design analysis of the super port in Morocco and I have also been given a smaller task of the Cat 3 design checks on a small boats marina in Gibraltar.  John will be impressed that I have done some hand calcs for bearing capacity and settlement all by myself but it hurt my brain!  I also had an escape from the office for a trip with the Army XC MTB to Cyprus for our training camp and to compete in the (not so) Cyprus Sunshine Cup, the first UCI stage race of the year.  There we were competing against Olympic medallists and World Champions in a 4 day stage race including 2 days covering 50km each in the mountains.  The final day was just 2 laps and a start loop on the XCO course that looked more like a Chamonix black downhill course but you had to ride up the back of the rocky drops in lycra!  The race started pretty badly when I was wiped out 20m from the start by my fellow Sapper teammate Maj Charlie Batty.  I think thought the photo evidence proves that I had overtaken him though!