Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

A quick bit of background:  The St George Hospital construction project is funded by Health Infrastructure (part of the Ministry of Health), the end users are from the Local Health District (New South Wales Health).  Brookfield Multiplex are the principal contractor and the contract is with HI; there is no formal agreement between BMPX and the local health board.  However, whilst HI allow the non-financial decisions to be made by the end users they are not formally a decision until HI have confirmed them.  As the CI pointed out during his visit, this is very similar to the set up of DIO/MoD (read HI/MoH) and the Army/Navy/RAF (read end users).

The issue:  In the first two months with BMPX I have spent an inordinate amount of time in user groups, workshops and completing reviews of marked-up documents.  It seems like every time we have a review the number of comments and changes increase rather than decrease.  Therefore, at what point do you stop asking the client what they want and simply tell them what they are getting?

Taking Security as an example; during the concept design phase the security drawings were signed off by the LHD management, the variation costs agreed with HI and the documents updated by the subcontractor.  Subsequently there was a review of which doors needed to be automatic and which needed to be held open.  Again, these were agreed with the LHD management, the variation agreed with HI, and the drawings updated by the subbie.  At this point the drawings landed on my desk with the instruction of “can you set up a final review to close out the final comments on these”.  Simple.  The result of this “final review” was nearly 12 hours of user groups spread over 3 weeks and over 150 new comments, questions, alterations and good ideas from the nurses and doctors that will use the new hospital.  All this has to go back to LHD management and the financiers at HI to review and accept/reject.   Only then can the drawings be updated (again) and a “final, final” review be conducted – I may forget to invite anyone else to this and just issue the drawings.

Luckily for me, as I did such a good job with the security workshops I now get to do the Medical Service Panels and the Nurse Call as well.  Over the next few weeks if you see the headline “Army Officer beats up nurses with rolled up design drawings” you will know why!

The solution:  ?

As I was walking around site in the beautiful sunshine of Sydney’s first day of “winter” I found myself staring at the PT cables in a new slab and wondering how it actually works. Whilst I fully understand the theory of post tensioning, I was unsure why the cables were is conduit – so my question is: if the the cables are not in contact with the concrete, how do they transfer the tension into the slab?

PT cables in conduits