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.
Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog 
Preceeding groundworks – how difficult is that…. Well, if a structural project is going to encounter the unkown it lies in the interface between the fully controlled design and the real world: Essentially the ground, but also everything that leads into and out of the structure so utilties and drainage. A structure is pretty basic, infrastructure and interfaces are tricky! How are you supplying raw material and labour, how is product distributed therafter…
Instant buildings are a tiny part of any infrastructure solution. As a PQE of any flavour you must never lose sight of all of the associated product requirement. But I guess you only put that line in to see if you could elicit a rant – success!
Richard, indeed I did.
Ground, process and raw materials aside you make a good point about using Gurkhas as being representative of local construction workers. I would have thought just their exposure to the western world over the course of their service would be enough to make them unrepresentative to most of the population, depending of course on how remote these are planning on being deployed.