Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Unfortunately due to the amount of services design development still required on the St George Hospital Project (we had our topping out party this weekend, so the fact we are still designing the services is worrying) I do not get to spend that much time actually on the site.  Instead I find myself doing a large amount of work for sub-contractors to get their designs and documentation correct and sitting in user workshops where different sets of users change the decisions that were made the week before.  However, every Friday I am set free from the office for the critical job of witnessing the Fire Damper testing – this is not quite as glamorous as you might expect.  The picture below shows my typical view for most of the test:

That’s Gary, he’s from the Mechanical sub-contractors and actually does the test. Once the damper has been dropped I then get to check it correctly closed the duct, if I am really lucky he even lets me rest the damper.

So rather than waste too much time staring at Gary’s bottom, I take the opportunity to look for defects in the installation of the various trades. Usually this is to do with penetrations through fire walls.  The top 2 images below show cabling in fire walls that is not spaced at the mandated 200mm (the top left is difficult to see as the offending cables are pink).

The bottom left image shows a fire collar that has been used to attempt to hide a very large gap between hydraulic pipe and fire wall.  The final image shows a fire damper penetration that is 7mm too big – and apparently 7mm is a big deal!

In line with Doug’s theme of things that went wrong this week…

When plasterboard meets water.

When there is no space for concrete in the slab because it is full of conduit.

Stay tuned for next week’s exciting episode that will feature Asbestos and a H&S person who expects me to have samples taken for every 25m^2 of a 125,000m^2 hospital: at $200 per sample, that is a nice round $1,000,000!

Oh well, at least it is the weekend…