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Snowmageddon
In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last week you’ve probably heard that the East Coast of the US has had some snow. The fervor of the media attention has been comparable with the chance of a dusting in London. We have had about 2 ft so the panic is perhaps a little more justified. In contrast this is considered normal in places such as the mid-west so why is it an issue for the D.C./Baltimore region.
Like most things I suppose it all comes down to risk as the area doesn’t get snow in these quantities it is not as prepared for the volume as other areas. Looking from a Facilities Management/Design Planning perspective I note a couple of things. We design drainage for 100 year rain events but also should think of the snow equivalent:
- Where to put it. Snow takes up quite a lot of space. You can compress it, but only so far. So what? In our condo there are, or should I say were, some outside parking spaces for visitors. Large grass verges have also been optimized, alongside peoples’ front gardens; any grass area is now a snow store. Also side walks, clearly Americans don’t walk so they are considered fair game.
- How to move it. Shoveling 2ft deep snow out of a driveway manually must be hard work; I can see why people died. Snow blowers are awesome for pathways and you could probably do a short road with determination and planning. Snow ploughs are a given. But the rate limiting step seems to be wheeled loading shovels or skid steer loaders. These have the capability of both heaping the snow higher and of moving it around in a more deliberate fashion than just pushing it to the end of a run. In the middle of the city dump trucks have been used to transport snow out of the narrow residential streets.
- Don’t wait for the end. 2ft of snow is difficult to manage, far easier is 1ft of snow twice. This keeps essential lines of communication open, gets everything open quicker and means that smaller equipment isn’t overwhelmed, therefore a broader range of equipment is useful.
- Drainage plans; three things on this.
- Firstly, knowing where the drains are so that they can be cleared to allow the snow melt in, by either marking them with wands, having a site plan of them or both.
- Secondly, putting drains, close to but not in the middle of the forecast snow collection areas. Close to so that there is not a long stream of water to freeze overnight, but not underneath so water can actually get down the drains. This hasn’t been done so well where I live.
- Finally, and another one that isn’t so great in our condo, is making sure there is actually a fall to a drain. I’ll leave that one as it is.
- Finally communication seems to be pretty key. I could talk about American authoritarianism but I would be descending down a slippery slope towards ranting there.
Obviously the whole experience has been harrowing being locked in with only the TMR 4 deadline for company and in no way did we get any skiing or any fun in at all.
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Port Augusta to Melbourne
Prior to Christmas I moved from the Sundrop Farm site in Port Augusta to Melbourne where I am now doing my design placement with KBR. This blog summarises the progress on site prior to my move and initial projects on the design placement.
My packages of work on site had more or less come to a close by the time I left. The lining of the lagoons and the installation of the freshwater lagoon cover were complete with only commissioning remaining. The three pump stations were all practically complete, with only snag list items remaining. Ideally I would have liked to have seen this through, but inevitably this wasn’t to be. Despite my personal work packages drawing to a close, pace on site continued to accelerate as the end of the year approached. The reason behind this were linked to a drive to get the solar tower erected prior to Christmas, which enabled JH to claim more in the final progress claim of the year. As I left the project was at the 50% complete stage.
The Solar Field – beginning to look complete
With this increase in pace I ended up picking a few packages, these included: getting the tower crane foundations in place, ensuring the solar tower foundation was prepared for the first tower section, installing the pipe rack and getting the foundations in for all the mechanical plant. Everything fell into place eventually but needless to say there was a lot of coordination required, as all these activities were on the critical path and in the same 50m². The whole solar energy system is a bit of a nightmare to be honest. The primary subcontractor involved was Aalbrog Concentred Solar Power (AAL), who were on a supply only contract. The package had been tendered as a concept design and as construction progressed it was clear the level of detail in the design was poor. There were numerous design changes after the construction had begun and as I left there were still too many unknowns for JH to put out the mechanical package to tender and expect to get a reasonable price back. In the end they made the call to use a JH workforce and run the package themselves. As I was leaving the estimate was that the mechanical installation package would be at least $3million over budget. The reason for this were various, but main errors include missing the cost for the heat shield on top of the tower out of the initial budget and budgeting only $6000 for the tower fit out, when it is actually costing almost $1 million. The reasons for these omissions are again various but a lack of knowledge about the concept design and assumptions about the AAL scope of work appear to be the main causes.
Anyway the solar tower was erected prior to Christmas as planned and now they are waiting for the top module to be finished so that it can be lifted on top. Off the top of my head it is costing $100,000 a day for the crane to be stood there!
Solar Tower – Top module still to go.
Design Phase
I have been in the design office for two weeks now. Work wise it has been a little slow, as KBR where not expecting me and there are a number of packages of work that are out at tender with the results due this week. I am based in the water group in the KBR office in Melbourne. Most of the work the group does falls under what is known as the Joint Venture (JV) with John Holland and is for Melbourne Water. All of the projects are design and construct. So far I have found myself working on the following:
- An Odour Treatment Facility (OTF) at the entrance to one of the main waste water treatment sites in Melbourne. The design of the facility is just getting to the detailed phase and I have been involved with the HAZOP process. The concept is pretty simple, foul air is drawn out of the sewer and though a filter which contains a bio media which feeds on the volatile organic compounds (VOCs), ammonia, hydrogen sulphide (H2S) and sulphur compounds, thus removing the odour. The budget for the whole project is $7.3 million.
- The second is a project is a Sodium Hypochlorite (NaClO) dosing system at the Greenvale Reservoir. The site currently uses chlorine gas but residential encroachment in the area and with additional water demands this is now deemed to be insufficient. The total project budget is $3.5 million. So far I have been involved with reviewing the P&IDs, conducting some pump calculations and am now beginning to write specifications for the associated instrumentation and plant. I am also leading with the design of the HVAC design for the new building that will house the dosing system.
- The third project I have only just begun working on today. It involves writing the technical specification for a waste water treatment facility that is treating the leachate from a landfill site. Previously this was stored on site and driven away by tankers. The operators want to reduce cost by treating on site before feeding into the sewer system. The earth works and main pipeline are now complete and KBR are going to put the mechanical and electrical install out to tender. The idea is that the technical specification will form part of the tender pack.
The Building Built By Gurkhas
This blog doesn’t focus on my experiences, but is a quick summary of other work being conducted by BWL. If you’re interested in pre-fabrication of or Gurkhas it may be worth a read. The work that I’m going to quickly talk about is the design, manufacture and construction of a pharmaceutical factory in a box. This has recently been written about in February’s issue of the Construction Manager. I don’t have a link, but I do have a scanned copy of the article if anyone would like it.
There is a growing demand for pharmaceuticals in the developing world. Previously issues surrounding the supply chain and skilled workers in developing countries had made constructing high-specification buildings such as pharmaceuticals factories difficult. Therefore GSK as the client and BWL as the consultant have come up with a system that has allowed a facility to be built at 30% of the cost of a traditional approach and in four weeks rather than 12 using a team of just 8 ex-Gurkhas.
The factory comes pre-packaged in iso-containers and is packed in such a way that the first item you remove is the first item that is needed. The building looks to be a steel portal frame with the factory then sitting inside this structure. There’s no mention in the article about pre-ceding ground work requirement, but how difficult is that? The factory includes details like the roof of the frame coming flat and then being able to pivot about the apex and be locked into position to avoid working at height. Likewise the factory internal roof is constructed at low level, services added and then elevated to the appropriate height using block and tackle. Connections between components are made with simple bolted connects that are colour coded to ensure the correct bits are put together.
All in all it looks very innovative project that has wider reaching applications. The significant element of doubt I have about this is that it was completed by Gurkhas. When people have discussed this in the office with me they’ve implied BWL and GSK used Gurkhas because they’re representative of the workforce that you might find overseas. Nobody seemed to be aware of the rigorous selection process that is required to become a Gurkha and therefore your probably dealing with someone who is brighter than the average. Also the article makes reference to the fact the workforce had some plumbing, electrical and decorating experience. Not sure if that means they were ex-Gurkha Engineers or not.
A screen shot from the simulated build sequence showing trusses being moved into position.
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