Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

My old site BCT – just seems to be the baddie in a 1980s B movie – it just won’t die.  Every week brings a new issue that needs rectification. Multiplex are expecting to make a $20 Million loss on the project.

I am spending a lot of time conducting what I call ‘Post Mortems’ on projects.  Each one could be a TMR by itself and can be depressing/interesting depending on how morbid your curiosity is.  There are a lot of firings going on and these Post Mortems are make or break for some people.  My boss described it thus – we don’t fire them ourselves we just put the ammunition in the gun.  Monday saw an interview without coffee for the main players in the BCT project team.  Why is your project already $1.5 M over budget in reo and you have only just come out of the ground?  Below is an email of my assessment of the reo overrun sent to my oss :

The facts of the situation are these:

• Projected versus Actual. The greatest increase in reinforcement has occurred at Level One with approximately 6.5 times the reinforcement projected( 107 T against projected 16.2 T). The majority of this reinforcement is in the transfer beams on Level One (84 T).  This leaves approximately 23 T of reinforcement in the remainder of the Level One slab (not including mezzanine). 

• The transfer beams were added  due to issues with the basement retention system.    The original design called for pad footings close to the secant pile wall.  However, because the secant pile wall was not deep enough in the North and East of the site,  there was concern that the footings close to the wall would undermine the bottom of the wall.  The decision was made early to remove the pad footings rather than issue the piling contractor with a variation.   Subsequent consequence analysis seems to have been focussed on the geometrics and car park spaces.  There appears to have been no formal consideration of the cost impact of the additional transfer beams. As a rule of thumb, one transfer beam costs approximately $35,000.  The decision to remove the columns in the basement and use transfer beams resulted in an extra 10 transfer beams (approximately $350,000).
  

• Contract Award. There are no transfer beams included on the Level One sketch in the Post Tension tender documentation.  While the transfer beams are shown in the capping beam documentation in S-CD-09-001 Retention Wall and Capping beam Plan, this information was not transferred to the Level One drawings.  There appears to have been no tracking of the transfer beams on a design register and it does not appear to have been communicated to the sub-contractor effectively during the tender process. 

Assessment.  The existence of the capping beam drawings muddies the water somewhat. On  one hand the sub-contractor should have been aware of the need for transfer beams from the capping beam drawings but, could argue that it was not covered by his scope because it was not on the drawings of Level One.  There were several failure of process within the Multiplex team. 

• Failure to communicate the addition of the transfer beams with up to date drawings prior to contract award. 
• Failure to understand the second order consequences of removing the columns in the basement (Cost).  

Regards,

Doug

Having thought that the PT designers had got the message about putting too much conventional reinforcement in the slabs, I received the new drawings for Podium Level 2.  The previous iteration had approximately 60 T ($120,000 over budget for level 4) of reinforcement over what had been agreed in the contract. Having worked late into the night to get an answer to the project team on the savings and ground truth of their design I was disappointed to discover this iteration had shaved a meagre 15 T off that figure ($30,000 saving).  Not good enough Mr Consultant show again!

In other news I have been playing around with STRAND (finite element analysis software) trying to assess the natural frequency of a 20 m span conventional reinforced concrete beam.  The beam is supporting a swimming pool above the ballroom at the Jewel Hotel on the Gold Coast and there is concern that the chandeliers could swing around because of the vibrations from the pool.  It’s not urgent but its fun to play with when BCT gets depressing.