Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Despite the threat of rain we managd to get the 55T crane in and place all the shutters for abutment A by thu to pour fri. I was literally waiting until just before the pour on fri morning for the pour rate to be issue from the formwork sub-contractor’s independent certifier but it came through just as the first truck pulled in. The concrete was 21oC which meant we could pour at a rate of 1.6m of wall per hour. The wall is 14m in width, 1.1m in depth and 8.8-9.2m in height (crossfall variation) which meant every 1m of height was about 15m^3. It took just over 7 hours to pour and in the end the service we got from Boral concrete was pretty good and just under the pour rate for most of the day. I ordered 136m^3 and had a 1m^3 left over with about 0.5 left in the pump so just about spot on and the site is noe taking shape.We also had very good progress on abutment B with the majority of the steel now fixed. I have pulled another saturday so the steel fixers are in again today and we are also cracking the bolts on the abutment A formwork in preparation to strip the dhutters on mon with the 55T crane agin and transfer them straight over to abutment B. If we can pour abutment B on thu as intended then we should be all good to lift the deck beams on over thu, fri, sat the following week just in time for rail to come through the week after that. The main issue will be weather, when we get a day of rain it usually takes two out of the program as the entire site becomes boggy. Dickson rd site is not too bad as we have all-weathered the short access track but we still have to pump the site the next day as backfilled excavation around the pile caps tends to become a nice swimming pool.

Kemps Creek bridge is practically finished now after pouring the final CSR walkways at abutment B. Rail has been laid across the bridge up to abutment B so we could finish off our work and all that remains is the walkway stairs to be formed and poured which give access to the abutments and piers. We do have afew access issues now though so may have to wait until the access route is finished in the stabling yard to do the stairs at abutment A as we can no longer put a pump on the deck due to the tracks.

This week as seen good progress for the first 3 days as the steel for the southern face of abutment wall A was placed. The vertical bars are over 9m in length so we hired in a 55T crane (the project has 20T & 25T Franna Cranes on permanent hire which are ‘booked’ through the superintendent) as the reach on a franna was not enough. It did look rather odd seeing a 55T crane lift 3 reo bars at a time so they could be placed vertically aginst the scaffold and secured but we required for the reach only. We also managed to form up and pour the wall sections of the outer deflection walls so two are complete with the wall for the third and the base for the fourth (currenty using that area as a laydown area) outer portions hopefully being poured next week.

We had a site walkabout with the rail saftey manager (a huge guy called Dragan) as we are looking at the alterations we will need to do to convert the site. This mainly consisits of alot of fencing and knowing who the Protection Officer (PO) is for that section. The PO is our link to the rail issues that may affect us. He will brief us in the morning on what work and dangers are present for that day and if we inform him if we need to gain access to the rail corridor. As our plan is to install the PSC beams early to let the rail team come through the site without us having to work within the rail corridor this should make our lives a little easier.

Thw CSR has finally been laid across the fron of abutment B and concrete encased and the backfilling complete so that we can finally start erecting the scaffold on abutment B a week late. We would havss started sooner but rain on thu and fri washed out the remainder of the week – quite literally. I am looking forward to pouring the abutment walls as it will be a chalenging pour but also because we finally get away from the ground for a while before we move back to the wing walls and retaining walls. It will probably rain on a daily basis by then.

Other challenges in life at the moment involve dealing with a 10 month old boy who suddenly decided to start crawling a week last wed. Since that day he hasn’t stopped moving and you really do need eyes in the back of your head – or you need to contain them! Decidied to pop down to Bunnings (B&Q) and buy a baby containig kit which has helped. Changing a categroy 5 pooey knappy on a little boy that will not stay still is probably one of the hardest tasks in life!

It is now starting to feel like we are constructing a rail line with rail now being laid from both directions. The stabling yard has been a RISI (Rail Inustry Saftey Induction) site for a few weeks but now the far eastern end of the track has now changed to a RISI site which means we are very much working to the rail timeline. The predicted rate of 400m a day means they will be at the Scalabrini and Dickson Rd sites within 4 weeks and Kemps Creek bridge will be handed over to the rail team by wed 22 May – the second bridge to be handed over out of the four.

Dickson Rd has progressed steadily but not according to programme, I think the programme was optimistic having now gained experience of how the site dynamic works between sucontractors, suppliers etc. We are at least a week behind on the abutment walls but have been able to carry out concurrent activity on the embankment retaining walls so may have gained afew days there. As we are expecting rail to be laid through the site about mid-june we have a tight schedule to pour both abutment walls and have brought forward the delivery of the PSC beams so that we can position them across the abutments therefore leaving the span area of the rail alignment free for rail to move through. Our focus will then be to pour the wing walls and the abutment retaining walls. We have just aout completed the scaffolding around abutment A so that the steel fixers can start next week. The outer parts of 3 of the embankment retaining walls  will b completed next wed with the wall stems to be poured. The fourth ERW has not yet strated as we are utilising the concrete blinded area to lay the 10m high shutters for the abutment walls. I hope that abutment wall A can be poured by the end of next week on Fri but realistically it’s more likely to be Mon the following week.

Kemps Creek bridge has now been cleaned up at waterproofed. Next week will see shock matting laid over the waterproofing which provides a bed for the bottom balast to be laid on which will also start next week. We still have a few bays of CSR walkway to pour at abutment A after placing the last remaining parapet sections which we should/need to complete by wed before the handover. We are handing over the site to the rail line but we still have few minor jobs to do but these consisit of access walkways below the bridge around the abutments and piers and access stairways.

We have now closed off Scalabrini bridge so that we can clear the 6 months worth of dirt off the deck ready for waterproofing following Kemps Creek. Defects patching work is also being carried out but we are now very close and completing three bridges with the remaining focus being Dickson Rd with an estimated competion of around Oct.

I am starting to notice the change in weather now as winter starts to creep up on us – the temp has creeped into single digits a few times in the morning but still tends to be in the high teens at its worst by lunch time. The main concern here is winter brings rain and as we all no rain in australia shuts down construction sites.

This week has seen reasonable progress although in my humble and inexperienced opinion the subcontractor carrying out the FRP works holds too much control over proceedings and the rate of progress. We have a programme which most of the engineers/management look at it and utilise but I am more convinced following this week that the subcontractor couldn’t care less what the programme says as they tend to look no more than 3-4 days in advance depending on their mood that week and a more honest appraisal would probably bring that down to a ‘one day at a time’ philosophy. At present we have no regular meetings/O groups regarding Dickson Rd as with all the other structures there seems no ‘stomach’ for them or belief that anything good will come from one. There is a weekly Structures Team meeting which lasts around 90 mins and does a great job of providing situational awareness to the rest of the team regarding all the work throughout the project. My goal over the next few weeks is to try and implement a weekly progress/forecast meeting by where we review the work done the previous week against the programme and highlight any issues and more importantly forecast what we want to achieve next week and get the subcontractor to ‘buy in’ and agree what we can achieve which may be different. We engineer’s seem to chat a lot and decide when things will be done without consulting any of those actually carrying out the work. The subcontractor seems to be a sensitive beast to me (apparently not the best but certainly the cheapest) which I am sure has nothing to with the fact they are all Irish but certain management individuals are somewhat prickly by nature.

Dickson Rd is progressing with both Pile Caps now complete and backfilling of material complete on one and about 80% complete on the other. This now means we can focus on the abutment walls which I was hoping the subcontractor would start with erecting the scaffolding late last week. Clearly this wasn’t organised earlier enough to get it delivered on site for Fri morning or it was decided they had worked hard enough for the first 4 days and fancied a slack Fri before the weekend. Both abutment walls are 14m wide and 9.4m at the heightest point (due to cross fall) and we intend to pour both continuously which will be about 140m^3 each.  Concurrently throughout the week we have constructed the shutters for abutment A and we have completed the steel fixing and forming up of the outer base slabs of the Embankment Retaining Walls (deflection walls) which we will pour on Mon morning. I am very close in being able to close down my first worklots which were the piling works but I am still waiting on the 28 days concrete test results and the Pile Integrity Test results. It seems the PIT’ing didn’t go well and the results were inconclusive. This seems to be down to the individual who carried out the readings who was actually the supervisor when we were piling. The Engineer who interprets the results has said he will now come out and re-test (free of charge) but clearly we now have a 1.2m deep pile cap between the surface of where he can test and where he should be testing – I wait in anticipation of the findings!

Kemps Creek bridge is really becoming very tight for time as we approach the handover deadline to the rail team. I was on Sat duty and predominantly carried out labouring duties as we worked towards having the bridge deck ready for the waterproofing subcontractor to start on Tue and a joint sealing subcontractor to fill in the gaps between the parapet wall sections on Mon. A slight annoyance has been that the remaining pre-cast parapet wall sections were delivered without halfen channels cast into them so that we can bolt them on to the brackets. Out of around 2500 parapet sections on this job these four are the only ones without fixing points and they were actually detailed on the drawings as so which none of us picked up on. The designers response was “we didn’t think you would need them” which was puzzling. So Sat was spent drilling new fixing points and grouting in threaded bars ready for Mon so we can install the remaining sections and then pour the final CSR walkway sections to tie them in. Other work includes crack repair and closing out certain Non Conformance Reports so that that Rail can take over the site.

Sorry for the lack of photos but I have had a media issue today – misplaced camera.

As last week included ANZAC day (thu) and yet another Rostered Day Off for all onsite trades on the fri, actual production has been very slow. So this post covers a week and half as we continue to try and get out of the ground at Dickson Rd. We have now excavated and blinded the four Embankment Retaining Walls (deflection walls) which are utilising as laydown areas for the pile cap steel. We have had a few problems in de-watering the pile cap excavations over the past couple of weeks as the shale material has been acting like a conduit to trickle water further down the alignment into what is the lowest point in the vicinity into our holes. The CSR is also not helping in that respect as they currently stop just before the excavations so water literally floods down the services conduits. After acquiring the a de-watering permit to discharge our ‘clean’ water (floculant added overnight) into Scalabrini Creek we got an enviro slap on the wrist when the pump head slipped out of the bucket and started sucking up the snot at the bottom which meant we were pumpng ‘dirty’ water for a while without our knowledge. We then pumped the other pile cap using a ‘sucker truck’ and eptied it into a holding pond a few hundred metres away having seen the civil team do this yesterday. The pond is geofabric lined and is treated regularly before emptied. The pond holds about 500 ‘sucker truck’ loads and we added 1 which again seemed to cause an enviro stir and our second slap on the wrist. Apparently the civil team ‘dobbed’ us in even though we didn’t think we were doing anything wrong. Theye claim that they had ‘flocced’ the pond the previous day ready to be pumped and that we had now dirtied the water. In our defence we asked for permission to pump from the General Superintendent who also seems to be the civil superintenednt as well. We were also told we require a permit to de-water everytime we want to pump and on the permit it has to state exactly where you are pumping to. Overall it has been a slow and frustrating few days but lots learned about enviro and especially the particulars of Erosion and Sediment Control Management.

We finally started to fix the reinforcement for both pile caps last week and after hoping to pour both by fri we just about managed to pour pile cap A on fri evening before the sun went down.

The shutters are about 80% complete on pile cap B and we should be able to pour this on mon afternoon. Before we can backfill we need to reach 32Mpa (75% of the design strength) which from testing has given us 4 days so by wed this week we should be able to start backfilling pile cap A and fri afternoon or most likely mon morning for pile cap B. We have been instructed by TPD to also carry out Pile Continuity Tests for which one pile from each abutment has been selected and after finally getting rid of the water and sludge at the bottom I was able to get them in to carry out the tests. This seems to involve grinding a bit of the surface away and banging a hammer on the top of the pile and recording the sounds. This will check that the pile is of consistent diameter throughout its length with no voids – I await in atticipation for the results!

Kemp Creek bridge is slowly edging towards completion although we will be cutting it fine. We were originally told that by 15 May the bridge needs to be complete as track will be laid, this has now moved to thr right by 7 days giving us some breathing space. I conducted an 86m^3 pour on tue of the CSR walkways which house the services but also tie in the pre-cast parapit sections. I seem to be getting a reputation with the concreters for being able to order the exact amount everytime we pour which I find rather to close for comfort if I’m honest. On this pour I had 13 ‘agi’ trucks and with 3 to go got my calculator out to work out what I needed to add for the message. Having ordered 80+ I activated an extra 6m^3 and all we had left was about 0.5m^3 which was left in the boom pump. I repeated this with Pile Cap A at Dickson Rd but it was a little more stressful but after we blew out the pump and emptied the hopper it was exact – I may just order a little more on the next pours to give me some wiggle room!

All the walkways are now complete for Kemps Creek apart from a few bays at abutment A. We have poured half of these to the construction joint level. The remainig parapit sections will now be fixed onto these ‘plinths’ and the top half’s poured to tie the parapits in.

The CI’s visit went well and after dropping both off at the Pyrmont office I manged to get back to pour Pile Cap A and see the concrete pump on Kemps Creek bridge die and dump 50 litres of hydraulic fluid on to the deck before it dissapeared rather sharpish

This week as seen fairly poor progress primarily due to rain but exacerbated by a growing supervisor turf war between my supervisor John McNally and the civil team supervisor working in the area. We couldn’t do much about the rain although we should have protecetd our excavation alot better than we did and I now understand the sort of volumes of water you can experience in this country in a very short period of time. We managed to blind abutment B in prepartion for the pile trimming to happen but the following day when checking the levels for abutment A we realised that the levels for the other abutment were wrong. My part in this was not insignificant as one of my drawings I produced to make the excavation easier to understand for the leading hand who was checking the levels for the excavator was wrong. The other two were correct and of course the designers drawings were there to cross check any ambiguity but it seems they fixated on one particular sketch. Neither I nor the supervisor checked the levels prior to pouring and so we had to rip out the blinding the next day and re-pour later in the week. Fortunately it was only a blinding layer (20MPa) of 6m^3 instead of a major structural component which would have been an expensive mistake rather than a lesson learned I think.

Blinding complete followed by rain stopping play for a day!

8 out of the 10 piles have now been trimmed to the correct RL so at least the steel fixers can start work on abutment A on mon morning and weather permitting we can get that pile cap ready to pour by the end of next week (only a 3 day week next week due to ANZAC day)

 Abutment A pile trimming complete.

The supervisor war on site has become a little childish and I am staggered about the lack of communication between departments. In this small area there have been 5 different teams trying to work around each other. At first I realised that the civil team need to take possesiion and do the bulk earth removal and I was fully aware of them and them of us after having a few meetings together and de-conflicting space and time issues. Since then the Combined Services Route (CSR) team have dug trenches right through our retaining wall areas (we have had to change the design of one of the retaining wall base slabs by cutting a corner off to miss the CSR) the rail team are constructing the overhead stanchions either side of the retaining walls and the other day a signals team arrived who started marking out and spray painting on the ground in the middle of both abutments. I am fairly sure they would have spray painted over my boots if I had stayed static for too long, this just highlights the attitude of work throughout the project for me. Everyone seems rather blinkered to their work only with little regard for others. I assumed we owned the site after all we are building the bridge and so any other trade/team would have to report to us or at least communicate with us, this however seems optional. When I have raised questions, concerns and recommendations it is met with a shrug of the shoulders and agreement that the situation is bizarre but no suggestion of why or how it can be changed. The issue still lies with the civil team who are all over the site and who have very little work left to do on this project apart from at Dickson Rd. Their supervisor has clashed with ours all week reagarding control of water on site. As we have produced the lowest point on site water will inevitably find us but due to earth stock piles further up the alignment we had directed and contained the surface water run off to abutment B only and had protected that with the use of bunding. By blocking access between the two abutments for safety reasons to stop 30T Moxy vehicles transiting through we seem to have aggrevated the civil team supervisor who decided to install a drainage pipe through a stock pile further up the site which has subsequently flooded both abutments. John McNally who is our supervisor and a fairly laid back chap responded by constructing a bund (the great wall of McNally) across the entire width of the alignment and blocking said drainage pipe. The arguments continue with both our superintendent and the general superintendent getting involved whose solution from what I can gather seems to be ‘bund more’ and ‘just deal with it’. I am not entirely sure anymore who has real control over who, engineers seem to have very little. Having thought at the start of this attachment that the structure and CoC was very similar to the Army it now seems more of a façade with little bite. The construction manager seems to have all the real power as he can fire and hire people which is what people ultimately care about.

 Clearing my tubes!

The inclonometer tubes after the civil team clipped the top of both of them a few weeks back had collecetd about 3m of water and a few clumps of clay which we managed to clear with a water hose and air compressor, heath robinson stylee effort. This managed to clear abutment A tube which I need to repeat on abutment B next week. Having had the inclonomter PDA sent back to me from Melbourne following repair I have finally taken the second reading and have a full set of initial results. Apparently the client requires a variation of no more than 3mm between readings which I think we are very close to if not slighlty over so I am not sure what the repurcussions will be. There is a history of coal mining in the area which seems to be the reason for inclonometer readings being required for any pile works on the project and I am supposed to produce a report once the abutment walls are complete and the final readings have been taken. I am not sure what form the report takes and if the readings are greater than 3mm at any point what remedial action needs to be taken. As I think we already have a reading very close to the allowed tolerance I assume the client needs to be aware of this now but what I have been briefed is that the client gets all the results contained within one report after the final reading has been taken. I need to look into this in a lot more detail over the next few weeks as the more I have got involved in the inclonometer the more questions it has raised – topic for TMR1 I think!

Hopefully this British style weather will go back to where it came from very soon and we can make some progress.

We completed all 10 piles on 3 Apr and for the past week and a half I have watched the civil team move a lot of dirt from one side to the other with no obvious plan. They have now taken possession of the site since we finished (they actually started ripping the road up while we were still on it!) to carry out the bulk excavation down to a sensible RL for us to carry out a more detailed excavation for the pile caps and embankment retaining walls. It has been a frustrating week trying to get a coherent answer or any information out of the civil team and I have picked up on a very strong sense of us and them between the civil and structures team throughout the project. The issue lies with the lack of work available to the civil team who are being pushed to close their worklots as soon as possible and move to other projects before coming back later in the year to proceed with the landscape works. There has been over million cubic metres of earth to move on this project and the Dickson Rd bridge is the final structure to start so they have been keen to get in and for us to progress so they can complete their work. Their impatience shows and results in less dialogue rather than more but by the end of this week we were all on a more even keel and the help of a few simple powerpoint sketches seems to have impressed and helped visualise the work required for all involved. We also have the Combined Services Route (CSR) digging away in the same patch of ground with one route adjacent to abutment B which we have successfully de-conflicted with but another route passes through abutment A and which at the moment looks like it travels directly through our excavation works. I am sure there will be more on this in next weeks blog but we first need to raise this issue with the designer.

As the civil team work to raise the ground on either appraches to the bridge we have manged to gain access to the abutments a day earlier than planned to start the detailed excavation at abutment B which we continued on saturday and hope to finish on Monday. We have now excavated about 2.5 metres below the existing road level and once we have cleaned out the excavation we can start the FRP works. Once complete the excavations will be blinded and the piles trimmed next week.

The pressure has been on at the other end of my section of works at Kemps Creek bridge which is at the entrance to the Stabling Yard. The stabling yard becomes a rail site as of Monday which seems to mean security gets beefed up to that of an army barracks (minus the armed guards) and the rail team works at a more relaxed pace. What this means for the rest of us is that we all work to the rail timelines. Track is starting to be installed at the stabling yard and so the civil team need to be laying the capping layer which the ballast sits on and so we need to have completed that end of the bridge so that the capping layer can be laid. We managed to pour the last segments of walkway at abutment B which faces the yard so come monday the civil team have a completed end to lay the capping up to. We still have the remaining walkways which house the Combined Services Routes (CSR) within them for the remaining 70m length of the bridge and we have been told we are on the critical path. We need to complete this bridge by 15 May for the track to continue from the stabling yard. Track is also being laid from the Glenfield end from 4 May so the bridge at Dickson will soon become critical also as the track approaches from Glenfield which is about 8Km away at a rate of 400m a day. Our aim is to complete the abutment walls by mid may so that capping, ballast and track can be laid between us.

The pre-cast parapets have been installed and propped before the CSR walkways are poured which tie-in and secure the parapet sections permanaently.

At the end of the week I got an opportunity to visit Civilbuild who are producing all of the pre-cast work for the project. These include the pre-cast parapet sections for all bridges for which there are over 2000 of various sizes and the pre-stressed concrete beams for Dickson Rd which was the reason I visited. I went up with the Project Verifiers to witness them pouring 4 of the beams for Dickson Rd but they eneded up cancelling the pour without informing any of us after a 3 hour drive to get there. 3 hours is considered popping down the road in Australian terms but having driven back to the project after an hour at the pre-cast yard and then driving home it ended up being 7 hours of driving. I did manage to see 4 beams they had already cast and 4 more that were formed up and ready to pour on mon. We require 22 beams for Dickson Rd and the yard has the capacity to pour 4 in a day. Each beam has a 300mm cylindrical void in the centre to reduce weight and is pre-stressed using 20 x 15.2mm (7 wire) strands with a force at mid-span for each strand once the tensioning jack is released of 175kN.

This blog covers the last two weeks as it has felt like a continuous week with one aim to get 10 piles completed for the foundations to Dickson Rd overbridge. There was Fri and Mon off of course for easter and all ‘non salary’ personnel had last Thu off as well so that was a non productive day.

MGI piling were the sub-contractors who we brought in to carry out the piling and the main realisation of the last two weeks is related to the AMS and site control. MGI piling arrived the Tue before Easter and the AMS was briefed to everyone so that they can ‘sign on’ to the method, then a services brief was carried out and the permit to excavate signed (this permit is about 50 pages long with 98% of the content irrelevent to my actual site and has remained on the back seat of the Ute ever since!). It seems an AMS is similar to an “Admin Instruction’ in the Army where the Engineer/Officer spends a great deal of his time to produce a document that very little people read unless I suspect an accident/incident happened where it would be scrutinised with a fine tooth comb. Even though everyone on site had signed on to the AMS to say they agree with it etc, a sub-contractor will invariable do what he has always done regardless! I have no big specific gripe on this issue it has just been an observation throughout the piling works.

As we had ordered oversized cages in the event we had to drill further than expected the Geotech Engr and subby concluded we would just drill further anyway to the depth of the cages so that we would not have to cut and weld on site – we had already got the welder on site ready to go before this was decided to the slight annoyance of the superintenedent who had to re-employ the welder that day and is another case of the sub-contractor deciding something without consulting either the suprervisor or myself, having already agreed to the methodology. A possible concern with this was if the sub-contractor would charge us more for drilling further and pouring more concrete but the time saved would be of more benefit in the longer term.

Each pile was drilled through the road surface and was fairly straight forward, I remained on site for the majority of the works in order to check off the Inspection and Testing Plan (ITP) checklist as the works progressed for QA purposes and to control the concrete coming on to site. We encountered water at about 9m of a 9.5m depth drill and in some it was only about 50mm at the bottom once the bucket had cleaned the toe out so on most occassions I eneded up calling the concrete forward so we could pour the pile before an excessive amount of water could trickle in through the shale below.

The sub-contractor arrived on site with a different rig (T-108 rather than a Mait 130 if your interested) than what we were expecting which meant the whole works took an extra day than we thought. As the reo cages did not need cutting we did save time here and each cage weighing 1.7T were positioned to the rear of the rig with a Franna crane and easily lifted by the rigs winch and lowered into the pile hole. Concrete placement was done by a ‘lay flat’ hose as opposed to a tremie pipe due the lack of water although on one or two in my very inexpert opinion it probably should have been tremied. They would check the water level in each hole before we poured and inform either myself or the supervisor depending who was there and we would be happy to expect about 100mm (65 litres of water) with the lay flat. On one pile post pour I observed water about 100mm below the top of the reo and considering there was a 1000mm projection and 400mm overpour this meant we had a least 400mm (320litres) of water in there. Water being lighter than concrete means it probably isn’t an issue providing the ‘lay flat’ worked like a tremie as they assumed.

I learnt a great deal about the practical issue of placing concrete this past couple of weeks. I had calculated 4.7m3 per pile and thinking that this figure was not allowing for the displacement of reo an order of 9.4m3 for the first two which we poured together would be alright – it was just! There was nothing left on the last truck and we just managed to fill both piles but I didn’t want it to be that close again so ordered 5 per pile/truck for the rest. I also learnt that you can never underestimate the stupidity of a concrete truck driver. One decided to drive past the site twice after us flagging him down but he still decided to go on a personal tour of the entire alignment before realising he had legs and could get out of his cab and ask someone where he should be! This meant the concrete was an hour old before it arrived and we had 30 mins to place it which wouldn’t have be an issue if it hadn’t failed its slump test twice (tremie mix 180mm slump). We ended up ready to pour just before the 90 min mark having added the maximum amount of water we could so not to affect the w/c ratio, it was 1645 in the afternoon and the Project Verifier had just arrived to witness the pour. In the end I decided that we had been fairly quick in placing the concrete with the other piles and we wouldn’t get another truck until tomorrow so I decided to go ahead thinking if we start to pour on 90 mins it will be alright. It went alright up until the last 0.5m where the concrete was fairly unworkable and kept clogging the hopper. With hindsight I wish I had just turned that truck away and even if we poured the next day we still would have completed all works on the same day. A Non-Conformance Report (NCR) may have to be raised although the PV has not mentioned anything about it and I have got his signature on the ITP checklist already. As we are overpouring by 400mm this will help and I think the top will be where the problems may lie but we can visually check the top of the pile once we excavate and trim. Although the tremie mix is self compacting we could have also tried comapcting the top 1m or so, another lesson learnt.

 Corporate pose – inclonometer readings.

Another annoyance was the back-filling of the holes as we had at least a 1.5m drop to the top of the cages from ground level we were to backfill the holes after 24hrs for safety reasons but the sub-contractor was quite keen to do this after about 3 hrs which included covering the inclonometer tubes. Fortunately I had made sure they were capped but having to dig them out again to take readings was a little irritating. I have taken readings on abutment B (24-72 hrs after pouring follwed by a second 24-72 hrs after the first) but have been unable to take the second reading at abutment A as the civil team have arrived and on Fri morning I went on site to see abutment A piles with a little earth covering them!

 The 5 piles of Abutment A are under there somwhere.

Some interesting local Sydney news for you over the Easter weekend: “Police were called to a domestic disturbance of a retired couple over the weekend. A 64 year old male has been discharged from hospital after having superglue poured into his ears and eyes. A 62 year old female is also accused of beating him with her prosthetic leg!”

By the end of the week I finally felt like I was adding value to what I was doing and not just being a newbie asking lots of questions. I am still asking lots of questions which I can only see increasing in the next few weeks as things get a little more complicated but after 3 weeks I am now producing product that contributes to delivery! With a large amount of handrailing from previous AMS’s I have now completed the AMS for the Dickson Road piling which starts on tue morning. It has taken a full week to get everyone to sign off the method statement and there has been a lot of red pen learning throughout the week. The biggest hurdle was of course health and safety and to understand the various management plans and JH procedures that I need to understand and quote. It has turned out to be a 39 page document for 3 days work! Luckily Australia have recently updated their H&S act from the Occupational Health & Safety Act to the Work Health & Safety Act from Jan 2012, which my ‘white card’ instructor told me was practiaclly copied from the UK so it is fairly familiar. Environmental issues are also a large consideration with the main issue seeming to be ‘dirty water’ run off into the various creeks that the alignment passes through. Any water that leaves the site must be treated before being discharged into a natural water course by digging a holding pond and adding floculant. It has been very dry here and recent excavtions down to 10m did not encounter any water nor did the boreholes which were done 3 years ago so we are not expecting a wet bore. However, we are planning for the worse as you do so we are using a tremie and as the hopper will be at ground level we will pour directly from the agitator truck. We will also excavate a trench to channel any water to a sump or pond but as long as it doesn’t leave the site we will leave it aone or use it as dust suppression. The top of pile will be about 3m below the current ground level so we will be drilling about 9m deep. As there is a 1m projection and due to RTA (Road Traffic Authority) spec we have to overpour by 400mm (dirty/unpure concrete top to be trimmed) so we ended up ordering 8m cages incase we have to drill further to achieve the required 5m socket depth within the rock. We also ordered additional L bars which we will weld onto the top of the cages at the required length so that they will sit flush with ground level to making unhooking the load easier for the rigger.

I have started to spend JHG’s money this week ordering 44m3 of concrete with a message (I hadn’t got a clue what he was on about initially but a message just seems to mean ‘there abouts’ so that you can tailor your last truck to the exactish quantity you require + or – your original order). I have planned for 3 days to complete all 10 piles (5 for each abutment) which would have meant we could have wrapped it up by easter but apparently thu is a RDO (Rostered Day Off) for all in the construction industry – apart from those on a salary – so we will have a 5 day break before competing the last 3-4 piles.

Having generated worklots for the two abutment pile groups and having produced a concrete pour plan you are also required to send out notifications based on the relevent HOLD and WITNESS points prescribed by the spec. Quality control on this project requires that both the client (Transport for NSW) and the RTA/RMS (Road Transport Authority – recently rebranded to the Road and Marine Service). The client has its own ‘surveillance officers’ that work along the alignment that need to be informed about what you are doing so that they can view the work with some points being HOLD points in which we can not proceed until they are happy. As we are working on the roads and rail we effectively have two sets of parents and the RMS have employed Halcrow to carry out Project Verification on their behalf so they also need to be notified about what and when we carry out specific work and it is these characters who take a keener engineering interest to make sure the RMS spec is being adhered to.

Overall this week has been a little too desk bound for my liking but unfortunately neccessary and I feel like I am now contributing and getting to grips with the project/company specific procedures. Having the power to spend alot of money and being aware/conscious of what you are spending is an experience I have rarely worried about in the army but here it is at the forefront of my mind. This mornning I spent $7000 on stainless steel dowels!

Next/this week as I am writing this on a mon, I will be mainly site bound as we install the piles and I also intend to focus on understanding the contract a little more. It is a Design & Construct contract and I have managed to grab a copy of it for some evening reading tonight before meeting up with Terry Stroud the commercial manger by the end of the week.

The weather remains rediculously hot – I hear there is a little snow in the UK – but I’m glad the Ute has aircon. Although the fact that everyone has a white Toyota Hilux with a flashing amber light has meant it takes me a lot longer than it really should for an educated man to try to remember where I parked!

Having spent most of my time last week getting stuck into the 47 drawings of Dickson Rd Overbridge I Have no switched my attention to another bridge. Kemps Creek bridge is an Underbridge which is the last structure that takes the rail line into the stabling yard. It is a 72m span which is about 80% complete but has sat idle for about 2 months as what I understand to be a ‘spartacus’ bicker occured as to who had the priority. The stabling yard won and so it is now time to crack on and complete the bridge by constructing the parapit walls. This is a view looking from the stabling yard end towards Glenfield with Eastwood Rd Overbridge in the distance. Both end appraoch slabs were cast on Thu and we ended up pouring to about 1755 where all works need to be complete by 1800 so we were cutting it fine – looks a little cloundy but it was still 25 oC. There are 46 precast parapit sections each weighing about 5T to be placed on the edges using angle brackets which bolt into the deck. Once these sections are secured then the walk ways will be poured which will cover the anchor brackets and tie in the parapit sections to the bridge deck. This has also been done on Eastwwod Rd bridge but as the brackets are effectively only temporary they didn’t seem to be strong enough, when the crash barriers were poured we had about 20mm movement on one section due to the weight of the concrete so that the bolts for the traffic barrier railing are now out of alignment.

West approach slab the day after being poured – the gantry’s in the background are the start of the stabling yard.

A view looking E from the stabling yard down the alignment – you can see Eastwood Rd in the distance which i near completion and beyond that Dickson Rd is yet to be started.

I have finished the AMS (Activity Method Statement) for the piling which now has a week to be passed around Safety, Enviro the superintendent, senior Project Engineer and Construction Manager for sign off so that the piling contractor can start next monday. The plan is that the piling will be complete within 3 days although we have a 1 day float before the easter weekend to complete. I managed to get hold of the borehole logs which were drilled back in mid april 2011 so fortunately around the same time the piling will take place. They drilled to a depth of 15m but the piling will only go to a depth of 8m and they are 900mm dia. The top of the pile cap will be a metre into the shale and then below there is a siltstone/sandstone mix. No groundwater was encountered which is understandable considering the dry summers here although the supervisor is convinced it will be a wet bore due to flooding they had in the area a few months ago. The rig is a Mait HR 130 which is tracked and due to the existing road providing a firm foundation it all seems to be straight forward with no issues perceived. Once the piles have been placed the civil team takes over for a few weeks to rip out the road and CSR (Combined Services Route) are placed so we will have a min of 2 weeks away from site I believe before we can finally trim the piles.

Dickson Rd Overbridge site (and my Ute!) – the bridge deck will be about 7m higher than current road level.

Eastwood Rd still has an opening date of 25 Mar which seems to be ontrack as the asphalt is now laid and they were finishing the walk ways on fri with line marking scheduled for mon. The final issue

that might scupper this date is due to the supplier of the throe screens that need to be erected. We still need to have a closed road in order to fit them but there is currently no work on when they will

be delivered. The supplier is from England and we are not sure if they are even in the country yet. If Eastwood is not complete this pushes back the piling of Dickson as we can not close Dickson as well

as Eastwood.

A big lesson learnt this week is site housekeeping and stores/material areas. We in the army have this drilled into us but by know means get it right all the time but it seems on this site if you you see

some reinforcement lying about and if you don’t get caught in the act you can help your self to a bit of it. I spent a good afternoon counting metal brackets and checking reinforcement deliveries which

we were all short and then learning we were the last in a chain of an organised pilfering scandal which means we are left with re-ordering half of what was ordered last month.