Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Week 2/3 and I have now started to get involved… Below are the details thus far of one issue I am getting to grips with – I have another in the back pocket for another blog as I’m conscious they can get lengthy…

BOC and Nilsen Essential Critical Power Supply

Who’s who?

BOC – Medical Gasses Equipment Supplier.

Nilsen – Electrical Sub-contractor.

NDY – Design Consultancy Sub-contracted to JHG.

The Issue

My first real task was to aid in an issue that arose when the BOC sub-contractor tried to ensure power connection to his plant (2 x medical gas compressors and 6 x vacuum pumps) in Plant Room 6 (PR6) to the power supply and found there were no cables fitted. This issue is also mirrored in PR5.

For all plant installation it is the responsibility of the plant manufacturer/sub-contractor to electrically connect back to an isolation point (usually via an isolation box).  Nilsen then take responsibility from the isolation point back through busbars, distribution boards etc to the main distribution board and incomer in the basement. The issue was that there weren’t any cables installed and Nilsen’s defence was there were no cables on the design drawing (fair enough). There were no cables on the dwg because NDY didn’t put them in during the design phase (why? Who knows).

The Solution

After an on-site mtg with BOC, Nilsen and JHG (consisting of the block construction manager, my LM and me) we came to the solution that Nilsen would install the necessary cable to a distribution board; the board needing to be roughly equidistant between each piece of plant to ensure a balanced load. This placement required my LM and me to look at the design dwgs and position it on the nearest column structure that also met other factors like accessibility, where the cable runs would go etc. Nilsen also required the load of each installed plant/equipment which consists of; 1 x compressor at 46kW (configured under a N+1 arrangement with the second compressor being stand-by so only one compressor will be powered on at any one time) and 6 x vacuum pumps at 6kW each (5 x duty and 1 x stand-by) giving a total load of 76kW. From this Nilsen can size the cables. NDY and Nilsen’s bigger task was to establish which connection point to the mains was best; either all the way down to the incomer in the basement (4 levels down via the service riser) or; as pointed out by the block construction manager connect into the Critical Essential Supply (CES) bus duct (essentially what a busbar is designed for) which is only one floor away and a number of rooms across but which is a lot closer overall and thus a much cheaper option as there would be a much reduced cable length (cost not yet estimated) not to mention reduced installation time/labour. However, my LM and I were discussing afterwards that actually the cheaper option of connecting direct to the busbar might not necessarily be the correct option.  The busbars should always have spare capacity (in terms of load) designed in so as to enable future plant/loads to be added – part of the head contract specification to ensure the design is ‘future proof’. So, by connecting direct to the busbar you will save on time and cost but you reduce the capacity for future flexibility provision both in electrical capacity (designed for 20%) and space(designed for 30%) this is in addition to the contingency provision of 10% capacity and 15% space. The devil will be in the detail as the load required by the BOC plant may be small enough that it won’t add significantly to the busbar – it depends on what percentage of spare capacity we can eat into, bearing in mind it may have been eaten into already. And will the client have an issue with it?

2 x Lento 37 Medical Gas Compressors set-up in an N+1 configuration.

6 x Busch 6kW Vacuum Pumps set-up in an N+1 configuration.

Commercial Aspects

Of course the biggest issue here is who is going to pay for the cable omission? This is where on a project of this size it’s good to be able to off load it onto the commercial team who deal with sub-contracts, late notice payments etc etc all the time….but for me personally this is an opportunity to understand the commercial aspects and help toward ticking off some competencies.  Contractually, here are the options (I must add this feels like answering one of Greg’s PCM exam questions): BOC say “we need power to our plant, where is it?” Nilsen say “no cable on the dwg therefore we haven’t installed one” (fair enough). JHG investigate and it turns out that NDY didn’t design it in therefore why it’s not on the dwg. So, quite clearly contractually Nilsen will put an invoice in for doing the works to JHG and JHG slap a design variation order on NDY. Cut and dry right? Well no, because NDY are a consultancy and they don’t have pots of cash lying around to dip into for mistakes like this, what they do have though is their liability insurance.  The issue here is it costs (in this case JHG) money to reclaim costs against a consultant’s liability insurance – somewhere JHG doesn’t particularly want to go. So where does that leave us? JHG will have little choice but to instruct Nilsen to carry out the works and when the variation payment request from Nilsen comes in pass it over to the Contracts Administrators to investigate how to handle it. The bill will be in the order of $250k, hence the block construction manager highlighting a possible cheaper solution.

Nilsen are on a Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP) contract, essentially they priced the entire works at the tender stage and should have a substantial ‘risk pot’ to cover these design issues but generally JHG will reject any Variation Order (VO) from subcontractors under a GMP contract. So JHG can turn to them and say “this is in your scope of works so we’re not paying twice for it”. However, JHG have rejected a vast number of VOs from Nilsen already to the point where another rejection (especially of this cost) could cause relationship issues and push Nilsen to rethink further business with JHG. The political point to add is that Nilsen are one of the best electrical subcontractors in WA and that is something JHG have to factor in. So the CA may have to come up with some form of compromise and when the total VO costs come in there may be some horse trading to be had. This is going to be a commercial contracts issue that is initiated by me raising a Subcontractor Direction – Authorisation Request (due to the commercial risk) which is then sent to the CAs and added to the overarching risk register.

An update whilst compiling this blog came through with the Project Director issuing NDY with a VO notice to pay for the entire variation and we are now awaiting NDY’s decision – potentially this is heading to the courtroom! This has been a good learning experience to investigate the ‘what ifs’ regarding contractual relationships and I will follow this through with the commercial team to see how it pans out and fall a little deeper into the bottomless pit that is contractual issues.

So what?

Aside from this issue on the whole JHG will try and steer any possible VOs away from a subcontractor under a Lump Sum (LS) fixed price contract and onto a subcontractor under a GMP contract as they know they can reject any possible variation claim. This only really occurs when the issue is at a physical point in space between two or more subcontractor’s remit of works and JHG can wangle it so the subcontractor under a GMP contract has to rectify the issue – thus knowing they are highly unlikely to win a claim for the variation. A basic example being ductwork (to be installed by subcontractor A – GMP) which will clash with water pipework (to be installed by subcontractor B – LS). If it is proved the positioning of both services are correct, as per the design dwg, JHG will try and make subcontractor A change their design.

Yesterday I was on a tower crane rescue course.  We listened to a bloke in a classroom for a couple of hours, played with a stretcher for a bit, swung around on some ropes, then spent the remainder of the day on top of a 60m tower crane.

Hanging around

For those that know me well this may cause some amusement since my level of comfort at heights is not one of my strong suits!

Hiding the fear!

All being well we would have practiced the rescue of a person from the cabin and would pass as qualified tower crane rescuers.

If you tie them down they can’t run away…

Just to prove that almost anything could be a TMR…

The course was called short while we were on top of the crane but prior to the rescue happening as the site could not afford the down-time on the crane.  The course had been planned for ages and they knew the crane would be out of use for an hour while this training was conducted, so why the change of heart?

It’s because we’re meant to be pouring a slab section on Friday.  The steel for that section is yet to be installed and the steel fixers spent all morning in the canteen as they’d not been paid.  Therefore there was a mad rush in the afternoon to fix the steel and the crane was being used to move the steel into position.

So because our sub-contractor hadn’t paid their sub-sub-contractor, we now don’t have people qualified in tower crane rescue.

Fat bloke stuck in ladder

Is it the end of the world?  The Work at Height Regulations 2005 require us to have the capability to recover an ill / injured operator from an area where we have sent him to work.  That includes the top of a tower crane.  We’ve got a plan and we’ve got the kit.  We’ve got willing people who have had all the lessons but haven’t completed the course.  The Regs do not require the rescuers to be qualified, only “competent”.  So do I consider myself competent?  No.  Unless I have actually completed a full rescue serial I would not consider myself competent.  If the crane operator had a heart attack now I’d have a crack at it obviously, but I would be that confident.  So could we stage a rescue of our own so we had practiced it?  Until we are competent we must be supervised conducting this activity by someone who is.  So we would need to get the instructor, or someone else, back here anyway in order to watch us do our training.  At which point we’d get the qualification anyway!

So while the rescue team must be “competent”, not “qualified”.  Without the qualification it is almost impossible to be competent.

It was a long way down!

The definition of “competent”: I am sure you could get 3000 words out of that, there’s 465 to start you off!

Following a good week in the office last week, I am starting to understand BP, Projects & Modifications and my role within it; here’s a flavour.

Ground

BP North sea operations currently own 6 assets in the North Sea. Bruce, Claire, Magnus, Andrew, Foinaven and Eastern Trough Area Project (ETAP), which are a mixture of single and double, steel jacket design platforms, with or without multiple subsea wells connected to the processing platform, with Foinaven being a Floating, production, Storing and Offloading (FPSO) vessel. It is the hub which covers ETAP that I have been assigned to.

Eastern Trough Area Project (ETAP) is an integrated project consisting of 9 independent reservoirs (each containing one or more well heads), 6 owned by BP and 3 by Shell, all linked to a central Processing platform. Considerably different from what a layman might consider a ‘standard’ single well, steel legged rig; the truth is there doesn’t seem to be a standard, with each of the 6 BP North Sea assets different from the next.

The diagram below shows the layout of ETAP. The main structure consists of a Processing, drilling and Raising (PdR) platform connected to a Quarters & Utilities (QU) platform, separated for safety. The Marnock well is directly below the PdR platform, with Monas, Mirren, Machar and Madoes (and Shell Egret, Skva & Heron) all being subsea wells, tied back to the Central Processing platform (CPP). The 6^th BP well, Mungo, requires a Normally Unmanned Installation (NUI) in order to carry out additional processes on top of what is required for the other subsea reservoirs.

ETAP Schematic

The picture below shows the QU platform on the left, consisting of a heli deck above the accommodation and welfare facilities, power generation units (gas turbines) and other services, connected to the PdR in the centre. The structure on the right is a Flotel, which provides additional Person on Board (POB) capacity when required (i.e. during construction or Turn-A-Round (TAR)).

ETAP QU & PDR platform with Flotel

Organisation

As mentioned earlier, I am assigned to a hub which currently only deals with ETAP (and Mungo), although asset responsibilities often move between hubs depending on workload, personnel and suitability. The 3 or 4 hubs (again remaining flexible) all work within the Projects and Modifications branch of Engineering Services, which itself lies within BP Global Operations Organisation, comparable, I guess, to a TLB in the MOD.

The main role of the Project and Modifications team is in the title. It doesn’t deal with well drilling or new platform construction (these are dealt with by Global Wells Organisation and Global Projects Organisation (other TLBs)) but instead deal with any routine or emergency upgrades, additions or repairs, primarily to enhance safety or production, up to a value of $15m.

Contract

A contract was renewed this year with Wood Group PSN (WGPSN) called BP Focus, which is a 5 year contract (with a 2 year extension option), which covers Upstream (offshore assets) and midstream (onshore processing) on a cost reimbursement + basis. WGPSN primarily only deal with the latter stages of the project lifecycle, (Define & Execute), with the earlier stages, (Appraise & Select), being delivered by Costain. Again, remain flexible.

The Cost reimbursement + contract means that WGPSN invoice BP for all direct costs incurred, due to general overheads and any work carried out on the specific projects. Added to this is a fixed mark-up percentage, the value of which depends on the cost element but as an example is 6% for ‘Real estate services, desk space, phones etc and up to 8% for personnel. In addition, there is an incentive scheme which offers a bonus of up to 4% against some of the cost elements, primarily personnel if a project meets certain Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which are agreed annually.

My Role

As a Project Engineer, I am the Single Point of Accountability (SPA) for a number of projects on ETAP. My role is to liaise with the appropriate team within WGPSN and monitor the development throughout each of the project lifecycle phases, engaging with BP staff, WGPSN staff and external agencies as required in order to move the project forward. Budgets and scheduling are key, and it will be my responsibility to ensure that timings are adhered to, budgets are realistic and monitored, whilst constantly feeding this back to the BP side to ensure there is one version of the truth. The BP Method of Change (MoC) process which is there to help identify, assess, manage and communicate risk throughout the project lifecycle also needs to be managed, to ensure the correct processes are being followed and that all relevant documents are up to date and easily accessible. This along with other key documents will form the basis of a go/no go decision at key points along the project life cycle either between phases or at the 12, 6 or 2 week review before the project is executed offshore.

Clearly this is an attempt to summarise in a paragraph what I am meant to be doing, having had very little experience to date; talking to Brendan and Nick, it is clear it is not as simple as it sounds and only be doing it will I get a thorough understanding. My next blog will explain a project I have just taken over, which should hopefully provide some clarity on all the above.

Key points to take away: The military are just amateurs when it comes to TLAs and flexibility is key!

Other news

Pregnancy – Still

New house – aim for contract exchange this Friday, completion next week.

Just been along to a meeting at my local BSAC dive club, looking forward to some off shore diving soon.

Site Two Fifty One – In the Thick of It.

Capping beam steel erection.

I have mentioned before that one of my roles is the installation of the capping beam which runs the full perimeter of my site (180m). The steel for the first 35m arrived on Monday to culminate a design development of something I have been responsible for since arrival. The capping beam will have an in-situ wall sitting on it and a basement slab spanning from it. Additionally, for about 5 months, it will be used as a beam to prop off in order to excavate one storey down.
Groundforce propping plan (click to open pdf): 1728 101

So there are elements to the installation which have huge consequences if not correct.

Single shear stub.

Double shear stub.

There is a drainage duct which protrudes through the beam and there are umpteen ‘king posts’ column sections retaining the old retaining wall behind.

Drainage pipe location (left). Bent bars around drainage position (right).

All in all, there is lots going on. The capping beam steel has been digitally modelled, which has 2 advantages. 1. It helps understand how it fits together and 2. The steel schedules are produced from it (Tekla software) which can be used directly by the steel supplier, rather than a person re-typing a pdf document.

As a task, perhaps initially seemingly pretty minor, there are actually numerous considerations:

• Sourcing of steel (Laing O’Rourke will only purchase from Europe although many steel suppliers source from China because it’s cheaper).
• Delivery method: pre-slung or stacked for slinging on site. Method of lifting (crane, excavator), LOAFs.
• Length of bars for working in congested areas (more lapping versus ease of installation).
• Stop ends (max pour size is 40m³.) Use of hirib to avoid scabbling.
• Prop end plate locations and bolt hole positions.
• Formwork design (yes concrete pressures for a 1.2 high beam is important).
• Resource management (lead times, timber, concrete, steel, tools and equipment)
• Concrete – waterproofing.
• Future slab starter bars (kwika-strip).
• Labour management (steel fixers, carpenters, labourers).
• Dewatering (bottom of blinding is at ground water level): sump pumps, discharge permits, siltbusters.
• Concurrent adjacent activities: sheet piling, CFA piling, muck away, welfare establishment, ramp movement).

Reflections.
So far so good, just. It is pretty much construction by just in time design. This means I am getting drawings hours (sometimes minutes) before they are needed on site. This means being familiar with bar mark notation, real detail in why shear links are here or there is key. In reality there are good people to answer my RFIs (temporary works department, Groundforce shorco, digital engineers, steel supplier (Midland Steel), the designers (Waterman)) but there are always pressures to deal with on site. Line and level of shear stubs for props, drainage duct location and invert levels and actual position of the capping beam itself.

It is hugely rewarding to see something you have been involved in start come to fruition, albeit the first big test will be my shuttering design! The concrete pour is planned for next week so no doubt the grey stuff will soon feature.

I think running the execution of the capping beam is a great chance to learn how things work before the significant challenge of the basement slab (entire site) comes along.

In other news, there has been the first working load test on the office piles and a section of site has had sheet piles installed to act as a replacement retaining wall (where the old substation was).

Pile working load test (as Pete predicted!). No further details yet.

Rotary bored (tick), CFA (tick) and now a bit of vibratory sheet piling.

Since the sub-contractor went into administration a couple of weeks ago their sub-sub-contractors and suppliers have been either walking off site (like the plumbers), or going straight to McAlpine in order to get paid.

We are now paying for:

Steel

Plumbers

Drainage stores

Skips

Waterproofing materials

Timber and consumables

Muck-away

Almost everything else

PC Harrington are still paying for:

Concrete

Some labour

The drainage is now being installed by Realtime.  Since we needed them to start immediately they had us over a barrel at least initially so they’re currently working on day rates.  A price will be agreed soon but in the mean time they’re making hay while the sun’s shining.  The contractor is throwing blokes at the job, which is great for our progress and great for his profit.  We pay £31 per hour for the drainage supervisor.  He probably earns half that at best.  The rest is overheads and profit. They are working totally risk free.

More concerning is that we’re having to supply timber and consumables.  Even B&Q won’t give PC Harrington any credit!  We’re also now supplying pull-out bars for the slipform.  Irritatingly they’re on a 1 week lead time.  We were only told they couldn’t get them yesterday, but they need them tomorrow.  Obviously this can’t be done.  We asked for the quantities and we’re told the engineer would do the take off for us.  This means they hadn’t done the take off.  That means not only had they not placed the order themselves, but they had no intention of doing so.

In a progress meeting yesterday PC Harrington told us that their recovery program would be issued 48 hours late.  They can’t even program when their program will be published.  They also gave us a list of what works they will complete in the next two weeks.  They told us how far behind they are today but had no idea how they would be looking in two weeks time.  Their forward planning is terrible.

There are some great things about working in civvi street: they are very efficient and know their stuff, the other day I was running late and didn’t shave before work, no one cared that I wouldn’t be able to get a proper seal with a respirator!

There is also some really annoying stuff.  The accuracy of their written work is terrible.  If I have to read another ITP describing me as a Mace representative when I work for McAlpine I might scream!  And their ability to plan beyond what their having for lunch is woeful.  I use to laugh at the term “military precision” having seen some pretty slap dash planning, but at least it was planned, which is a start!

Rant over.

UPDATE – We are now also buying their stationary.  Today we had an order for 30 reams of A4 paper!

I never thought I’d say this, but I really do long for Eurocodes.  Whilst the plethora of EC books for design exercises in Phase 1 may have seemed confusing, whilst being in the USACE office I now realise just how thorough and user friendly they all were.  I can almost picture (longingly) the flow charts we used for steel design.

Instead, I am presently hamstrung by a Steel  Construction and Design Manual (SCDM) that is 3 inches thick and literally made of cigarette paper.  Not only is there no easy flow to the manual and its contents, but it sits in isolation with no sponsored design examples. Instead there are a plethora of Design Guides that are not up to date, therefore do not reference the SCDM accurately.  In some case, such as one of my projects (a supporting structure design for overhead cranes), US structural engineers use a Canadian design guide that is more thorough…and to add injury to insult, it uses metric units rather than imperial! Added to that is the choice of which design philosophy to use, and the one you have decided to use may not be the one that the Design Guide explains and/or uses in its design examples.  That said, though my design calculations seem to take an inordinate amount of time for me to consistently detangle my knickers, it has forced me to go back to first principles!

Two design philosophies exist in the USA: Allowable Strength Design (ASD) and Load and Resistance Factor Design (LRFD).  Both are strength based philosophies, though ASD was historically stress based. My first question was: What on earth is the difference and which one do I use?

1.  When considering the steel yield vs displacement graph, the combined force levels (i.e. load, moment  shear) for ASD design are kept below Fy, by taking the nominal strength Fu and dividing it by a factor of safety (aka permissible stress design).  For LRFD, the combined force levels are kept below a ‘computed’ member load capacity which is a product of Fu multiplied by a resistance factor (aka limit state design ~ Eurocodes!).

2. ASD treats live and dead loads equally, thus uses one FOS for both live and dead loads – this accounts for uncertainty in load and capacity.  Consequently it is simpler to use and more conservative.  LRFD however recognises the inconsistencies of dead and live loads thus allocates a higher FOS for live loads than dead loads as dead loads are believed to be more accurately calculated….  LRFD also recognises inconsistencies in material properties and construction tolerances.

So, though LRFD is proven to be a more ‘efficient’ approach in that it harnesses more of the strength capacity of a member, legally we can use either method for steel frame design.  ASD has historically been significantly quicker than LRFD for preliminary design although recent editions of SCDM have become more thorough for ASD.  I honestly believe that having uses ASD, it appears quicker than LRFD (not that I have done the latter yet) but it is still far slower than EC….largely due to the complexity of the Design ManuaI (and because imperial units are driving me insane!)  And that is the reason that every engineer has told me why old-school US structural engineers are steering well clear of adopting LRFD (not the units piece).

The same goes for timber and masonry design; concrete is the only one where LRFD is mandated (by the ACI).  But to add even more confusion, USACE has mandated LRFD for certain design work such as hydraulic steel structures. Then, I have also found, that product catalogues will vary in what methodology they have used for their allowable loads – this makes things incredibly tedious.  All in all a disjointed approach across all  the institutions!

As previously mentioned our BIM set-up is more targeted at data collection than actual collaborative working and as a result we lack many of the real benefits BIM has to offer.

Our river wall consists of a 16m deep sheet pile wall that is paralleled by a 6m anchor wall. The two are tied together by 63.5mm bars (dwg below). This was installed a couple of months ago.

River and anchor wall design

Yesterday our piling contractor hit one of the tie rod sticking out of the back of the anchor wall.

6m deep, tie rod visible on the left of next to the light.

The sheet wall and piling scheme designers are different and neither of these are our principal designer. We are now in the process of getting the pile location redesigned. Hopefully the designer confirms the coordinate change in a couple of days otherwise the piling gang will be stood at a cost of £6k/day. Whilst I’m not going to get in to the specific details it is fair to say that collaborative working would have gone a long way to prevent this form happening.

So…

What is the better approach, setting up an expensive system and enforcing it or paying to fix problems when they arise?

It’s now the start of my third week at BP and although I’ve not really got into the detail of what I will be doing and be responsible for, I thought I would summarise what I have done to date and offer an anecdote or two. A separate post will follow on BP, the contract and my role, in due course.

Safety, Safety, Safety

It’s a bit of an eye opener, exactly how safety conscious BP, and indeed the wider oil & gas industry are. I have had to do two inductions as you might expect, one for each of the buildings I will be working in. The Wood Group PSN induction was a fairly straight forward video, which lasted 15 mins or so, the BP induction lasted a little under an hour, at the end of which I received the guides shown below. The main document (top right) has 23 pages, each of which either presents critical information, directs you to read one of the other documents or asks you to carry our further reading / action, which all require a signature; this is then followed up by the second part of the induction process.

A bit over the top for an office environment? My opinion is not. (you may be surprised by that). What it does, is make you understand just how seriously they take your health & safety and drum this into you from the start, reinforcing the company values of ‘No accidents, No harm to people, No damage to the environment’. (try sitting at Costa in the Union Square shopping centre in Aberdeen; you’ll easily be able to identify those in the industry – they are the ones who walk up the stairs on the left and hold the hand rail)

The place where H&S is absolutely vital is of course off shore on one of the installations. To that end, last week, I completed the Basic Offshore Safety Induction & Emergency Training (BOSIET), Compressed Air Emergency Breathing Apparatus Course (CA-EBA) and the Minimum Industry Safety Training (MIST). The BOSIET Cse was probably the most interesting as it goes through the different types of offshore installation, how to survive in water and in a life raft, firefighting, basic first aid and of course the heli dunking; good value.  MIST had some value and added to training already completed at the RSME and previously. (Offshore regulations, Fire, Risk matrix, permit to work etc)

Process, Process, Process

BP appears to have a very defined and slick process for everything they do; the most obvious is their Management of Change (MoC) process. This is supported by an online application which groups together information and documentation for any individual project from the screening phase all the way through to hand over, with great usable features including automatic email updates, assignment of responsibilities and go/no go gates.

They also appear to be very swept up in dealing with Information Management (IM) using their Intranet sites to good effect; I certainly spent a lot of time in my first week reading the various areas and has been useful whilst writing AER1.

Notice that I used the word ‘appear’ in both those paragraphs; I’m sure time will tell if it is as good as it looks or if it will be comparable to JPA, SPOC, MOSS et al.

Money, Money, Money

It’s eye watering looking at the costs of what seem to be simple projects. I will make this a separate post in the future, once it is fully understood as it’s deserving of its own blog.

In other news

Aberdeen is a great city – Would certainly consider living here

Charlotte is still pregnant (27 weeks) and don’t I know it!

Still waiting to move into new house (in London) and preparing for our DIY(ish) ‘Grand Design’

For future BP attach-mentees: I am preparing a 3-4 pager ‘Get you in’ Admin Instr to summarise the last few months of admin points, similar to the AUS document, but clearly a lot simpler. This will be stored on the RMSE servers. Additional documents (initial actions and HO/TO notes) will then be available on arrival which have been passed on from previous courses.

There is no public investment into the Peters Village project and the last time I checked it was not 2016, therefore we are not at liberty to conform to any governmental BIM direction. That being said we are aspiring to collate all of the project data centrally and utilise technology to increase efficiency at an engineering and management level.

So is it working?

The Good – We have a BIM co-ordinator, a cloud based server, lots of drawings and 3D models. We have iPads with more auto-syncd forms than you would ever need and the ability to capture any media file type and link it to technical information. There is a data base that allows you to see (with permission) the commercial files, drawings, specifications, programmes, plant and materials lists on your phone if you so desire.

The Bad – The engineering check list and QA forms are on Autodesk BIM 306 on the ipads but the filing system is overly complex. The cloud based system is different to BIM 360. We have multiple designers who are using different CAD co-ords so dwgs need aligning. The designers are mostly sending through drawings in pdf format and not as part of a master CAD dwg. The cloud based servers is provided through a satellite link on the East Site compound and boosted over the river (very unstable). Whilst the cloud based system allows access anywhere, the system to upload and download files reminds me of the pain I went through trying to submit AER1. On and on…

The Ugly…Truth – The aspiration is commendable, one central log of information, accessible by all, from anywhere, anytime. The reality is multiple databases holding vast quantities of unrefined information. This is not as a result of lack of ambition but rather lack of training, man power and strategy. Those driving BIM are double hatted and unable to dedicate themselves to it, also they seem to lack the full support of the wider workforce.

BIM carries a high price tag and requires considerable effort to establish the required processes. Early set up and buy in are key, without them the whole process becomes a clunky digital filing system with increased vulnerabilities and lacks the ability to assist with increasing efficiencies. I find myself wondering if the system we have in place has actually brought about improvements of if it has over complicated things.