Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

No, not the tale of the musical dance battles between the Jets and the Sharks, although I am trying to stay clear of the latter when swimming in the Indian Ocean, but my initial blog on the Perth Children’s Hospital Project.

After arriving in country three weeks ago, settling into hotel life and acclimatising to Western Australia’s (WA) so called ‘chilly’ autumn (29 ºC is not chilly!) I started work eager to get stuck in and put my newly learnt theory to the test…that was until I was told my White Card was not valid and I was unable to access the construction site (more on this later). I will post another blog next week focusing on aspects of the attachment other than the project but wanted to gather a bit more info first. So, on to the project…

Project Logo

Commercial Detail

Before I dive into the Project Overview I’ll get the commercial side of things, as I currently understand them, out the way. The Minister For Works (State of WA) being the Client have appointed John Holland Pty Ltd, referred throughout as John Holland Group (JHG), under a Managing Contractor (MC) Contract to perform the design, construction, commissioning, completion and 24 month post completion maintenance of the New Children’s Hospital; Perth. Essentially, JHG are the Main/Principle Contractor on a Design & Build Contract.

Construction started in Jan 12 with an estimated practical completion date of Jun 15. Is Jun 15 realistic? Thankfully (for me) it’s looking more like Dec 15.  The project is awarded liquidated damages of $180k (approx. £100k) per day with the defects and liability period of 24 months starting after the actual practical completion date.

JHG have numerous contracts in place with; Building Services Design Consultants, Norman Disney & Young (NDY) (my potentially Phase 3 attachment) and other Sub-Contractors/Specialists. Specialists of note include, Cundall, who are employed as commissioning management consultants whose role it is to aid JHG to integrate all the different E&M services so they work as designed/intended.

Organisation

The Building Services Department is made up of the Building Services Director, 2 x Building Services Managers, a Building Services Commercial Manager, a Testing & Commissioning Manager and a Project Administrator/PA to the Building Services Director. Each of the Services Managers has 2 x Coordinators/Administrators and a Site Engineer. I work in the Testing & Commissioning Team which comprises 5 personnel; the Manager (with 18yrs experience, currently working towards Chartership with MCIBSE); a Principal Engineer (CEng MCIBSE & MIEAust & CPEng); an Electrical Engineer Associate (CEng MIET); a Commissioning Programme Engineer and finally myself.

Project Overview

The new child specific hospital is being built on the existing Queen Elizabeth II Medical Centre site costing the State $1.2 Billion and is intended to replace the aging and dilapidated Princess Margaret Hospital for Children some 4km away. This hospital will be the first of its kind in Australia with elements being at the cutting edge of technological innovation in the world. Key features include; 298 beds, increased isolation rooms and outpatient and day-stay capacity over the Princess Margaret Hosp, integrated research and education facility, dedicated parent accommodation suites, 12 multi-use theatres including an intra-operative MRI and two interventional theatres, a 10 bed high dependency unit, child-care facility for up to 80 places for children of shift-workers, Helicopter landing pad for the QE II campus, centralised sterilising unit for the QE II camps, the first single state inpatient mental health unit for under 16s, Automatically Guided Vehicles (AGVs) and of the 26,737m² land area (foot print) 3,500m² of which is green space including roof gardens. If you imagine the analogy between an Aston Martin Vanquish and a Reliant Robin – Medway Maritime Hospital being the Reliant Robin then you’re on the right track.

Due to the scale of the project, the works are broken down into four structures – East Block (EB), West Block (WB), Centre Block (CB) and South Block (SB).

Project site split down by blocks; East Block (EB), West Block (WB), Centre Block (CB) and South Block (SB).

A bird’s eye view of the site – Feb 15.

The construction update as at Mar 15 gives; 57,000 drawings produced, 1000s of meters of electrical cable, pipework and ducting installed and to get the civils salivating; 2,000 piles installed, 11,332 tonnes of reinforcement installed, 122,000m³ of concrete poured; with the overall structure 89% complete.

Completion Delays

There are numerous reasons why the project has been delayed and in time I will no-doubt learn more about the finer details but for now the key known factors are the following; The Client (State) wanted to increase the bed capacity by 48 over the initial design requirements, this had the obvious knock-on effect of having to find the space needed and resulted in completely redesigning rooms and parts of the floors. With the complexities involved with the numerous services required in a hospital you can immediately see why this has a huge impact on time and consequently cost; One of the features of the project is the Central Sterilising Store Department (CSSD) which was originally design to a certain size to accommodate servicing all Units on the QE II Medical Centre Site. The requirement then changed as it was decided the CSSD would also service a future women’s hospital (decision still not made) which meant that it had to expand, again having similar knock-on effects as above.

Although there was a Client requirement for the design of the project to be ‘future proof’ (exact contractual wording) I don’t think the finer procurement detail was ever nailed down and thus JHG and the Client are in dispute as to who should pay for the resultant increase in associated costs.  There are many other examples of unquantifiable/ambiguous wording used in the contract which are giving the commercial team a lot of headaches – like ‘fit for purpose’, ‘best for project’.

The bulk of the remaining work is Testing & Commissioning and 2^nd Fixes and Finishes but there are still a number of construction tasks remaining; for example the bridge structure link from the CSSD in CB which will sweep toward and connect to G Block (the existing theatre building within the QE II MC site) that will cross over the road below that will house the track for the AGVs to move between buildings. However, the AGVs will initially only circulate within the project building until fully proved.

My Role

My main role as a Building Services Project Engineer is looking likely to aid with the Testing and Commissioning Plan by working closely with Cundall (the two CEng personnel mentioned above) and includes understanding the technical side of the design (by NDY) for various services. No doubt in time the role will grow/change especially as I start to tick off my UK-SPEC requirements and look to seek out specific work which will enable TMR and Thesis input. During my office meet and greet I had a brief chat with the engineer whose job it is to integrate BIM 360 with the other Autodesk products/packages used who is essentially tasked with getting the project completely BIM(ed) up. Thinking back to our BIM presentation by Cross Rail during Phase 1 – this level of integration is JHG’s goal and is using this project as the guinea-pig. This is therefore the first major project where JHG has used BIM to this extent which was a requirement set out by the Client in the initial tender. More on this in subsequent blogs but safe to say from the weekly BIM meeting (my first mtg on day 1) it is interesting to see just how many clashes there are between different services – the air-conditioning sub-contractor getting the brunt of the hammering (possibly as there is ducting literally alles uber der platz).

Occupational Safety & Health (OSH)

As alluded to my UK White Card was not accepted for me to gain entry to site so I had to complete the WA version which was, shock horror, basically the same (I’d argue easier than the UK version) – an outsourced online eLearning package with multi-choice questions but slightly different in that once completed you only passed when you were called by the company’s auditing team to verify it was you that took the assessment and you had to answer a few more questions over the phone.   I have already checked if Matt was in the same boat and was surprised that he was allowed on site without having to conduct his states version – I know state-to-state requirements may differ slightly but I would have thought JHG’s OSH Policy would be the same across all projects???

JHG’s ‘No Harm’ safety slogan.

In other news

On the 8 Apr 15 the Australian Treasurer approved the foreign investment proposal by China Communications Construction Company International Holding Ltd to acquire JHG – They are the 4^th largest construction company in the world by revenue.

My wife and I are getting into the Oz spirit of ‘loving fitness’ by joining the local swimming and triathlon clubs – I feel another Ironman coming on…