Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Things aren’t looking so rosy in our principal M&E sub-contractors’ office. Their office consists of about 40 personnel and they’ve been on site since January, however, to date they’ve had 12 people leave the project (granted one was a death – natural causes) and a further 4 are ringing for a taxi. As I understand it this is incredibly high turn over and made even worse by the fact that SRW is a company that prides its self on normally having low turn over.

What’s the issue?

Its very simple – toxic leadership. SRW’s package is split into two halves – fit out (putting all the MEP kit in the apartments) and infrastructure (getting services from where they enter the building to the apartments).  Each half is headed up by a director and both directors have a leadership style which leads a lot to be desired. This is resulting in the out flow of people. What is particularly worrying is that the flow doesn’t seem to be slowing down, if anything as the job is getting bigger and more pressure is being put on the flow is increasing.

What’s the impact?

The project is loosing some quality personnel, but even when an individual who isn’t particularly talented leaves there is still a loss of knowledge. The problem is further compounded by the state of the construction industry in London; between Battersea and Vauxhall alone there are over 5 major construction projects (that’s counting Battersea Power Station and it’s 3      current phases as 1). In short there are lots of jobs out there and a huge skill shortage to fill them. People who would have been section engineers are stepping up to fill package roles and package managers are becoming project managers. SRW are now struggling to recruit into the gaps they have in their organisation. A recent SRW vacancy at Battersea attracted 11 applications, but hasn’t resulted in anyone being placed. I’m not sure whether this is because there wasn’t anyone of a high enough calibre applying or whether the applicants got wind of the situation on site and decided to look elsewhere. SRW now have a significant number of gaps, which means that the work load of those that have stayed is increasing rapidly. This is causing problems in the way the works are being managed, increasing stress levels and will ultimately lead to more people leaving.

I’ve felt this first hand in the last week when I was engaging with SRWs commissioning manager about flushing a riser in order to bring on line temporary heating. It felt like the blind leading the blind – I’ve never commissioned anything in my life, but I felt like I had a better grasp of what was required than SRWs manager. Whether this is because he’s stretched in other areas or because he lacks experience I don’t know. Every question I put to him went straight to the trade contractor with no value added. I’ve also had to review the RAMS for this process this week, which was a painful experience. Again the paperwork has come from the trade contractor. SRW have signed it off as status A, which means it is absolutely faultless in their eyes. This is utter rubbish, it’s status C at best, which means it needs re-writing.

Every cloud has a silver lining

We were supposed to be starting flushing on Wed next week. I’m currently struggling to get drainage sorted for this activity, which means I was staring straight down the barrel of a delay notice. Fortunately for me SRW have only just (yesterday) submitted their RAMS. So I can contractually take 10 days to review the paperwork before telling them its crap and getting them to resubmit; SRWs half hearted effort checking their trade contractors paper work has saved my bacon (presuming I get the drainage sorted).

Once I’ve got TMR 2 out of the way I’ll hopefully provide an update on where we are with the flushing – I’m sure you can’t wait!