Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Right, my first foray into the ‘blogosphere’!  I understand I’ve been a little ‘under the radar’ so far, but fear not!  It isn’t that I haven’t been reporting on all the exciting Engineering that I’ve been doing, more that to date there hasn’t been much exciting Engineering to be reporting on!  However, last week I was finally granted access to site, and later this week the final part of the enormous and unwieldy security clearance ‘jig-saw puzzle’ which began in November last year should finally fall into place!  It makes me feel slightly better when I hear that senior level civilian and military personnel from my office have been waiting for over a year for this honour, still with no end in sight!  So in some sense (particularly with regards to any US Federal organization [sic]) I’m actually still well ahead of the game!  So where will I be working, and what have I been doing so far:

East Campus

The overall program on which I’ll be working is called ‘East Campus’ and it’s essentially the re-development of the Ft Meade golf course into a super-duper all-singing all-dancing state of the art complex for a ‘high security’ client.  Currently the level of ‘agreed’ government investment stands at something near $1.4bn!  This is clearly a lot of money even for the US, and especially a Democratic government (we’re standing by for the blank cheque in November if Mr Trump continues to do well), so it hasn’t all been coughed up at once.  Congress finds it much easier to write these cheques if they’re asked for in smaller bite-sized chunks over a period of many years.  The afore mentioned $1.4bn is only what has so far been approved, and should take the programme out in construction terms to round about 2021.  However there are four more phases yet to be put before Congress that would take the build out towards the end of the 2020’s and cost who knows what.  As it was put to me, “It just depends on the demand and political circumstance”.  The obvious down side to this ‘bit-part’ approach is that each ‘bit’ of secured funding equates to a completely separate project which is being constructed on a shared site.  There are currently four projects being constructed simultaneously on the one site.  All have different contracts, designers, contractors, funding arrangements and timelines, and as if that weren’t mad enough, some of the projects even tie-in structurally to each other!  It should be quite chaotic, particularly as all parties share the same site access; however someone had a cunning plan which involves not enforcing any sort of traffic management plan and only vaguely checking who moves to and from site, which has alleviated some of the congestion.  More on this in following weeks I’m sure.

My Responsibilities

So what am I going to be doing?  My role and site experience will be quite different to that of everyone else.  Instead of working for a contractor during this phase I’m going to be working for USACE (United States Army Corps of Engineers), which aside from wearing green kit all day means that as a team we are responsible for overseeing the contractor and acting as the client’s representative on site.  It is worth pointing out at this stage that USACE is completely different to the Royal Engineers.  Whilst there is an ‘Engineer Regiment’ as we might recognise one (mobility, counter-mobility, survivability etc etc), USACE takes a far more active role in civilian projects than the RE and have some quite staggering capabilities.  For example USACE provide and manage something like 25% of the American hydro-electric capability (nationwide)!  In my office of perhaps 50 personnel there are maybe four military personnel, the rest are Engineers or other specialists all working for USACE.

I’ve not been in the office long enough to really nail down exactly what my responsibilities will be.  There is certainly a huge amount going on here and the potential is huge.  However after reading a number of the other blogs I’m a little concerned about how much ‘crunchy’ engineering there is to do here.  The project I’ve been put on is something like 65% complete already, and much of the remaining work for us appears to be in checking and verifying what is already being built and making sure that the contractor doesn’t take too many liberties!  I’ve also been given a few rather menial paper-pushing tasks.  However, I’m still battling to understand exactly how everything around here works and fits together, so my plan is to work hard, try and create a name for myself (in a good way) which means I’ll be able to grab the opportunities when they do arrive.  Two of the other projects on site are just coming out of the ground and I know there is scope to move around if I need to gain experience in a particular area so I may well get to do some mud-licking yet (John the soil here is most definitely ‘yellow sand’, or maybe ‘well-graded yellow sand’).  The real positive is that everyone seems really friendly, approachable and genuinely very happy to have an exchange Officer with them.  Everyone in the hierarchy here has expressed the importance of me achieving my objectives, so they understand my situation and it’s up to me to make it all happen.

Other News

I have an American driving licence, or more accurately a Maryland driving licence (it’s done on a State by State basis).  To achieve this I had to do a three hour drink and drug awareness course (so I now know where to find drink and drugs in Baltimore), then drive round in a circle for 15 minutes making sure I went through all the appropriate red lights.  I’m the proud owner of a Golf GTI (sorry McClure, but the GTI is the smallest car you can legally buy in the USA, fact).  It recently passed its bi-yearly emissions test, presumably because it has emissions, and also because it’s a VW.  Apparently there’s a certain amount of pollution a vehicle has to produce which is written into the Constitution.

I’ve been asked if I’m Australian a worrying number of times, but after that the accent seems to do wonders.  I’m constantly thanked for my service, but then neglect to tell people my only ‘tour’ was in flip-flops and polo shirt in Cyprus!

When dealing with Federal or State agencies, if the computer says no, the computer really says no and nothing will change it.  I was recently asked for my UK address.  Unfortunately England wasn’t available on the computer, no Great Britain or United Kingdom either, we looked for GB and UK just to check, but neither or these worked so in the end I had to settle for Watford, Germany.  But the computer was happy so all was good.

More technical blogs will follow (I promise)……

So I saw Chris Holtham’s awesome post and decided I should probably put pen to paper (in a digital sense) and bring you up to date with what is happening in the ASS heap that is Hope Street.  For those that are seeing my entry for the first time ASS stands for Acid Sulphate Soil or Sulfate as they spell it locally – apologies for the odd bit of colonial lingo slipping in Neil.

The meeting to end all meetings.  

We were 25 days behind schedule thanks to the worlds biggest props on site and the decision to weld rather than bolt them together.  The safety manager had been fired and the contracts manager had quit from stress. The Project Engineer was no longer speaking to the subbie PM and I was placed in charge of the excavation and ground anchors.

I held a trades risk workshop for the ground anchors and rather than focussing on the risk, my Project Engineer and Site Manager ended up having a spectacular fight with the subbies over the lack of a plan.  To sum it up never in the history of construction has the ‘C bomb’ been dropped so much, by so few.

Never forget it is always about people and relationships.  

Since then I have fought hard to form a working relationship with the subbies.  I have had actively manage the senior management within BM, who take micro-management to Lego Movie proportions (if you have kids or nephews you will understand).  The passage of information around the project is appalling and as a consequence I have instigated a regular daily conference with subbies and then briefed the senior management because they can’t be in the same room together.

As the project has gradually come back on track, relations have gradually thawed.  I spent today detailing a kind of visual programme/ cartoon method statement for how the job will get down to the foundation level.  If all goes well I will have made back the 25 days and will be back on programme.  I will handover to the other site engineer, who is not an engineer, but is in charge of the structural part of the construction while I apparently need to do the services – he is the same genius who worked on the struts and walers.  How’s that for outside the box thinking?

So What?

Here is the rub.  While the last 6 months in Chatham, have given me the confidence and skills to call people out on talking engineering rubbish (and I have).  The majority of what I have done in the last two months could be done by any army officer.  The ability to talk to people like a normal human being, to state your case in a logical yet firm manner are key transferable skills that the civilian world needs.  The civilian world has the perception that soldiers act in a way reminiscent of full metal jacket.  I think they could learn a lot from us.     Communication is key to any undertaking, taking a robust position does not necessarily mean having a blazing row. Firm, respectful and logical beats idiotic rants any day (although this article may seem like one).

Other stuff that has happened.  That I will write about soon.

• The braces of the loading platform buckled (my structural site ‘engineer’ colleagues responsibility) – TMR gold apparently.
• How to build foundations straight onto rock.