Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Now TMR1 and Thesis Form A’s are out the way I thought I’d provide an update on placement progress and a few of the issues we have encountered along the way. As my title suggests many of these are occuring because of the relentless pressure on the construction team to deliver the project as quickly, cheaply and to uncompromisingly high quality . As we know from phase 1 something probably should be prioritised, unfortunately that doesn’t appear to be a well received strategy on site.

As you may recall (probably not) from my first blog we are using a top down methodology on the main Tower structure. Underneath the large Ground Floor (GF)slab we have unleashed the earth work contractors to crack on with the bulk excavation, taking our basement level from 9.0m OD to around 2.0m OD at its greatest point. This is a twelve week programme based on a target of moving 100 spoil vehicles away from site each day. The largest obstacle to this operation is not the digging or site movement of spoil, it is actually getting enough vehicles to and from site despite the constant challenge of breaking through London traffic. As such much of the earth is moved away at night which is probably proving a delight to our few local residents. To the sub-contractors credit they are doing well; they have their own exclusion zone so everyone else is able to keep out the way, which is useful considering the large number of excavators and dump trucks rattling around below our feet. Now they are underway tempo is impressively frenetic and as a result the ‘Bat Cave’ is taking shape nicely.

The challenge of starting this process did throw up a nice on site leadership issue. After four weeks of hard work thrashing themselves to get the basement ready for commencement of this excavation , which they achieved, the junior construction team got a harsh email from a senior manager criticising quite a few trivial things on site. This inspired a near mutiny and, for a few days, a very inharmonious working environment. It was remedied by an honest, open conversation between various levels of management. One of the junior managers (not me I should add) fluctuated between near tears and incandescent rage when explaining his disapproval of the heavy criticism the on-site construction team was consistently receiving from, in his words, ‘Office bound desk jockeys’. Add a few favourite Aussie expletives in there behind the word jockey and you get the gist of his point. Everyone is now friends again, for the moment, but the unrelenting pressure applied by the project management team is starting to take its toll on morale. We shall see how long the current truce lasts.

Above the GF slab we have commenced structural steelwork on the main Tower, another key milestone. On Saturday six 20 Tonne steel columns were erected with a mobile crane. This was all going well until they realised that the lifting plates, temporary steel lifting connections attached to the head of each column, were fabricated in the wrong orientation. Fortunately, with use of a heavy duty steel drill and an extra few hours the issue got fixed and the columns were placed upright in the correct position. Drilling extra holes into precision fabricated steel elements on site isn’t an elegant solution but it worked. Now the columns are in place steel beams are starting to fly in (not literally of course) and the skeleton of the ground floor structure is rapidly taking shape. The steel erection is surprisingly quick and they are clearly a well-rehearsed team. Floor one will hopefully be complete in a few weeks, at which point we will have only 39 more storeys to go!

Above the steelwork the east slip form rig of the large central concrete core has begun to rise once again. Its currently at floor 8 and will pause at a pre-determined hold point on floor 10, allowing the western component of this core to catch up. We will not be able to progress the core beyond floor 10 until the pile cap is constructed in the basement. This controls the vertical load through the exposed plunge columns in the basement, primarily required to prevent them buckling which is obviously bad when you have 10 storey’s of reinforced concrete suspended on them. Once the pile cap is constructed the effective length of these columns is gradually reduced which allows us to increase the axial loads and continue the progress of the slip form.

We have also increased the Tower Cranes on site from 1 to 3. To make things more challenging we selected self-climbing cranes, one suspended inside each core. These effectively hang off the walls of the cores and climb up the lift shafts behind the slip form rig. Unfortunately this is reasonably new technology in the UK and nobody really understands the process for each climb or how long it will take. We really are making much of it up as we go along. What we do know is that if we don’t figure it out soon then the slip form rig will catch up with and hit the crane. This is problematic. The other excellent news is that our three cranes are all pretty much aligned on the same axis and therefore clash frequently. Trying to figure out which crane can do which task without impeding other works is like a giant Crystal Maze puzzle with no solution. This problem has an impressive number of intelligent people very confused for most hours of the day.

And in final news we had a very serious accident on site. A scaffold contractor fell roughly seven metres through a hole in the GF slab and into the basement excavation. I’m told that’s far enough to know you are falling before hitting the ground, which is obviously a long way. The investigation is ongoing so I can’t really add anything else other than that his injuries are, luckily, fairly minor considering the distance he fell. He landed on soft, loose soil which was very fortunate indeed. Had he hit the large item of plant located close by it probably would have been a different outcome. Without going into the details it looks like a freak accident, that said it proves the point that if something can go wrong, give it enough time and it probably will. Be careful out there folks!

In summary, tempo is relentless in order to maintain programme, quality cannot be compromised and the cost must be controlled. This all adds up to a very challenging construction project with lots at stake. More to follow once the excavation hits the pile cap OD.

My time on phase 3 is drawing to a close (3 weeks to go) and phase 2 have now been on site for a while and are possibly starting to consider their options for phase 3. I thought it might be worthwhile blogging about finding a phase 3 placement.

I’ve been attached at a company called Bryden Wood Limited. Bryden Wood is a small consultancy with approximately 80 employees split across four offices (London, St Albans, St Petersberg and Singapore).

How did I find my placement?

I used contacts I made whilst on phase 2. Carillion’s M&E design manager at Battersea had worked in consultancies previously and used his contacts to get me an interview / informal chat at BWL. That chat was pretty pain free and was as much about me confirming that BWL could for fill my requirements. Other options that were open to me but that I didn’t follow up were working for Carillion’s consultants. I didn’t pursue that option as I felt there would be too much risk of being sucked into working on design associated with Battersea.

Advantages of working at Bryden Wood:

The advantage of working for a small company like Bryden Wood is that I don’t feel like a small cog in a huge unwieldly beast (which was often the case at Battersea). The projects I’ve been involved in have been relatively small in size, which means I’ve had a great deal of autonomy on them, which has been very useful for gaining experience. The company also doesn’t feel particularly corporate and has a family feel to it, which makes it a nice environment to work in.

Downside / Risk of working at Bryden Wood:

The main downside of working for a small company like Bryden Wood is that there is a bit more risk in terms of the amount of work available. We’ve had a few projects put on hold, which has led to contractors and permanent staff being laid off. This has led to the number of projects I could get involved with being reduced, that being said I’ve never been without work; although for my last two weeks it looks like I’ll be doing some pretty mundane CAD work.

Potential Opportunities

In summary I think my attachment at BWL has worked well. Although I’ve not covered as many projects as I thought I would do at the start of phase 3 I think I’ve covered enough – the proof will come in a few weeks at CPR. I still stand by my decision to go for a smallish firm. I’d recommend BWL to any M&Es looking for a placement in London or Hertfordshire. I’d be more than happy to make introductions if anyone wanted look at them for a possible phase 3 attachment.

Not much to report on my site due to construction delays resulting in no on-site E&M activity and so my days are currently spent reviewing tender bids and checking designs.  So instead of blogging about something interesting happening on site I thought I would write about a little ‘wrist slap’ I got the other day which for me highlighted a key difference of how we as Army Officers sometimes ‘do business’ compared to Engineers and Project Managers in industry.  I hope this may serve as a warning to others or the Phase 1s.

Last week I was reviewing the mountings for three 11T chillers and calculated that they had a uniformly distributed load of 14kN/m^2 which exceeds the slabs design load of 9kN/m^2.  Also these chillers are mounted in the centre of the slab and exert a maximum point load of 31kN which again exceeds the specified design loads.

Since we are under a management-only contact, the responsibility for the design of steelwork mounts or slab reinforcement lies firmly with the Principle Designers, in this case BDP.  So I wrote an email to BDP explaining the problem and in good Army Officer fashion, I didn’t just point out an issue but also suggested 3 possible solutions that we in the office had been discussing based on the specification of the selected chillers which up to now the designer had no visibility of.  So, a job well done thinks I and I move onto another task until the designer replies with a developed course of action.

Anyway, within a few hours I received an email back from a member of the project working for Skanska instructing me to not ‘suggest’ potential solutions in future correspondence to the designers.  This is because the designer (who is getting a reputation for cutting corners and doing as little work as is possible within the confines of the contract) will likely read the email and just choose one of my suggested solutions without investigating it further or developing a detailed design as I had hoped.  Furthermore the designer would likely list Skanska as being responsible for this design change which would ultimately result in Skanska unknowingly accepting a significant design risk.  Oopps!

So from this I have learnt that although some of the methods we have developed in the Military are generally very useful and well received in industry, we still need to be careful as they may not always be the most appropriate and we cannot always assume that those around us will also act in a similar ‘good ole military fashion’.