Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Building 45:

Having gotten over the moral and ethical issues I have with spending tax payer’s money on a project that is adding no value what-so-ever I have been pressing ahead with additional work on the seismic calculations and retro-fit options. The Geo-tech guys were really kind and decided to change their site classification from an E to D…..great….. it basically means I get to start all over again with the calcs but the overall forces involved will be lower – meaning fewer bolts and connections in the final design. Other variations keep cropping up as the Architects periodically change their minds about what they want to put in there. I feel a spreadsheet coming on.

I have started writing specifications for concrete, steel and timber for the final project which is possibly the most tedious thing ever….but also the most important aspect of the documentation. In any discrepancy between drawings or scopes of work etc, the specs will take precedence so they have to be right. Apparently I’m an expert now have been asked to review other people’s as well….kill me now.

I am also writing the scope of works for this and thankfully this is a little more engaging. When you’re doing a new build – you want everything to be new and shiny and anything less than that will result in a slap on the wrist and an early bed time for the contractor. On a renovation where you’re on a tight budget however, that’s a different story. Exactly how much section loss are we allowing before we have to replace a joist? How much cracking constitutes needing a replacement? What level of water damage is acceptable? If you’re not careful about how you scope this you’re basically drawing up a lovely shopping list for the contractor who will kick the arse out of it and tell you that EVERYTHING is suffering some sort of deterioration. I’m working on making this thing as detailed but user friendly as possible to ensure that when this goes out to bid, all contractors will know exactly what they are bidding on. It’s going to go forward with an estimate of how much damage we think is likely to be present (bearing in mind we don’t even have access to all the damaged areas) and then we’ll be asking for a unit rate for variations above or below that price.

I hate to admit this – but Auto CAD is currently kicking my ass.

Levee Repairs:

A significant crack has been found on a hefty retaining wall in Pennsylvania. They are trying to get a rapid turn around to effect some repairs prior to hurricane season. One concern was to make sure the contractor is able to provide a ‘temporary plan’ to protect the levee system if a flood even occurs during the construction phase. The main engineer and the technician were banding around all sorts of temporary framing and ‘if this happens then do x y or z’ until I suggested to simply make the actual shuttering for a concrete pour capable of withstanding the full flood event in itself. This way there is no plan b to go wrong or get mixed up. I helped them create a configuration that allows the formwork for the pour (including a corner expansion joint) to be installed safely whilst fulfilling the temporary / flood emergency criteria.

Poplar Island:

Some great advances have taken place on this project. As part of the research I appraised a number of additional options for decanting water over a ‘weir’ structure and into a tidal inlet structure. I developed my concept of a roller-shutter configuration and demonstrated it to the Engineering Research and Development Center (ERDC) who ware very positive about its potential application in a ‘clean’ environment. They are looking at possible ways of attracting some money so they can look at wider applications.

An option that was actually suggested by ERDC and adapted to my application was for a flexible skimming weir which I have appraised and (unfortunately) had to discount due to a raised likelihood of increased approach velocities. A variation of this is actually going to be built at one of the other districts. I have established lines of communication for the teams so they can review progress of the design and application

To get over the complete lack of emergency discharge options – I generated an option that would allow stop-log stack to be forcibly ripped out of their frames. Again this has been presented to ERDC who have now taken the concept another step further with the use of ‘rebar pullers’ to avoid the requirement for a crane to lift the stacks.

Eventually – I drew a close to the research and appraisal and drew a final proposal together based on all of the best practice, lessons learned, material properties, constructability and practicalities. The proposal has significantly improved safety and access provisions. (Floating platforms – safety rails – inclusion of emergency discharge options etc)

I delivered a presentation on the research and the final proposal to the USACE Poplar Island team who have been extremely supportive and complementary about the proposals (To the point that they have little to no changes to prpose other than possible tweaks to the main bulk-heads to make them less substantial). They want me to re-package the brief into a contractor friendly version (I’ll do it all in cockney rhyming slang) so I can present it to the Port Authority and the primary contractors. Initial estimates are that the combined structure will make savings in the region of $2.2M for the expansion alone. (Mainly generated by construction efficiencies in not having to re-mobilise plant and equipment and reducing bulk earth movement). The green light has been given for the detailed design to go ahead after these presentation / feedback sessions have occurred……so it was all worth it.

I continue to generate further links with other districts via the ERDC where folks are tackling very similar issues but from a different perspective. I believe that because the team here has been ‘doing what they do’ for so long now they stopped looking further afield for inspiration. Hopefully I can generate some positive cross-pollination of ideas and methods as a result.

In Other News:

There is a nice little town by the name of Intercourse in PA. The wife want to go shopping for arts and crafts (or a giant steel moose head depending on how you look at it). So I figured it would be worth inviting our new neighbours Nick and Caroline along via text message from my wife’s phone….”Hi Nick. Seeing as we’re all getting on so well, Matt and I wondered if you’re interested in Intercourse this Saturday.” Perhaps it was a bit too formal. Either way – Nick is not so easily fooled.

We also found genuine tins of Heinz baked beans…our first in 15 months. It started off in a civil manner as the wife and I savoured a brief (slightly less sweetened) taste of home. It quickly degenerated into accusations of bean theivery and possessiveness from both parties. We quite literally need to hire a bean counter in order to maintain domestic harmony. Undeterred I have begun a secret stash at work…..pity my colleagues!

Finally – I offered my creative skills to the poor folks who run the maintenance in the building. After a series of confusing and contradictory notes appearing around the office – I conducted my own non-verbal communication exercise to help them out and get the real meaning across.

My name is McFry – and I approve this message.

Afghanistan Bunker Collapse:

After some additional feedback from Richard Farmer I re-visited this report (as it had kind of become my favourite drum to bang on). Just to add some more murk to the mire I went through some of the background information such as the early statement of works and it would appear that the mad design was almost dictated to the contractor by the USACE. It detailed that the walls would be of HESCO and would support the roof structure. There is sufficient verbiage in there to be sure that the contractor shoulders all risk but now I am of the mind set that the contractor was pretty much set up for a fall. I have had further battles with the USACE Engineering and Research Development Center (ERDC) to get them to carry the torch on this and sort it out. BLUF = Put actual numbers in the design guides for what loads the concertainers can safely carry (bearing in mind poor local construction methods and materials) and we’ll have more peace of mind.

I finally got authority to release sanitised photographs to HESCO (Jake McQueen) so that they can use them to educate the RE, the USACE and the industry in general. Subsequent contact with Jake has highlighted that he has been invited to go and visit ERDC with relation to loading tests on bunkers…so even though they haven’t admitted it (to us) it seems the ERDC  are actually taking my comments on board.

Poplar Island:

Here’s the pop-quiz: water flow over a crest, into free fall, to then land in a crash zone before flowing into a pipe which has an existing (variable) tidal level which then has to normalise under gravity….. Having tried to develop a model for what appears to be the most complicated fluid dynamics question I could have possible attempted – I gave up in favour of identifying common features for identifying and comparing various designs that will allow me to decant the top layer of  a dredge material through a level culvert and into the sea. At least it gives me comparables to make decisions. If anyone is feeling clever – please feel free to give me a hand!

I suppose the question would be something like “A lake is 1000m by 1000m and 4m deep (assume a datum of 0). A 2m wide weir is used to allow water to flow into a 2m by 2m square chamber. At the bottom of the chamber is a 2m by 2m square culvert with a zero incline. The culvert opens out into the sea which is currently filling the culvert to a depth of 1m. What is the maximum allowable release depth of the weir that will maintain efficient flow through the system?”…….well I’m buggered if I can figure it out…..and the hydrologists here at work make excuses or fake heart attacks when I present it to them. I think I’ll stick to my stick and string engineering for now!

Model showing high chamber to release dredge material into concrete culverts and out to sea.

I am now confident that the entire operation at Poplar Island has never had any kind of plan for emergency discharges into the bay (for if the main dikes were in danger of being compromised – we need to be able to balance any head differences as quickly as possible). Having applied some thought process to this I now see that traditional methods of using stop-logs to create the weir crests would actually be too dangerous to operate in such a manner. The more logs you remove, the quicker the velocity of the water (and the deeper the water) gets, making it extremely difficult and dangerous. So the answer to the emergency discharge question is ubiquitously ‘it’s never happened….yet’. If the need ever arises – they are currently screwed. I’m looking at some ways around this – none of which have ever been tried before by anyone in USACE at least. One idea was for a large scale  mechanical roller-shutter device. Whilst the idea is probably a non-starter for a silty environment, it may have a wider application on flood defences where space and access issues are a concern.  I discussed the idea with a roller shutter manufacturer – warning them that if they stole my idea I’d hate to have to hunt them down and kill them! Another idea which I am trying to develop uses an array of flexible tubes that will increase the flow into the structure…but more to follow once I get my own head around it first.

Building 45:

One Colonel promises another Colonel he can get his staff a lovely new home because they are being cruelly kicked out of their current offices. His staff prepare a request for some dollars from congress to re-fit building 45 for the purpose. They balls up the estimates but it gets approved. All wheels are now in motion but now it’s kind of clear that they will not be able to get what they promised congress they would be able to for that money. A bunch of the funding has already been spent on looking at options and now it falls to USACE to try and fix the issue. Make savings of about $2M by ‘getting creative’ so that the project manager that screwed it up doesn’t get sacked and the colonel doesn’t end up breaking his promise.

My role has been to do the seismic analysis which has demonstrated that the building does not currently fulfill the code requirements and I am designing a bracing system to overcome this. A number of structural defects are also present that will need to be repaired and I am drawing up some specifications to allow the work to be bid for. The drawings are proving a little challenging even though we had that really long CAD course at PEW.

Lovely water damage to floor joists. (over 3cm penetration with a trusty screwdriver)

The really interesting thing in this one for me is the way in which everyone is now in complete denial about how this is going to turn out. The Project managers are continually trying to come up with creative methods of mixing and matching different sources of funding to make up the numbers – but this is where people go to prison. “Dear Mr Congress man – I asked for a bunch of cash to build X but I actually borrowed from Y and Z as well and gave you less than we promised we would in the first place.”. More than a month has passed and the brass are still unable to come to terms with the fact that someone needs to put a copy of the yellow pages in their breeches and go and take the spanking. All the while we have been cutting from the electrical, mechanical, architectural and fire control systems to the point that we aren’t actually doing anything except make the building structurally sound… Others are worried we may be leaving too much money left on the table, to which the response form the Branch Chief was ‘don’t worry – it will be a sole source bid so they’ll spend as much as we tell them to”!!!! WTF!!! Reminding people that this is tax payers money seem to be un-cool apparently. The final straw for me was when I asked sufficient questions to basically get them to admit that while ever the Client (Army Support Group) can’t make up their minds, we are happily employing people and spending ASG money because there is little work elsewhere for the architects…..again – we are wasting tax payers money for no other reason than we can’t generate work from other sources. We now have internal Government organisations screwing each other over so they can get the money….which all comes from the same pot…..shoot me now.

I keep offering to go and be the bearer of bad news and even help the Client look at other options (like how the re-shuffle could be accommodated by moving other personnel etc) but if I do that I will dry up their source of tax money sooner rather than later… so this is not the preferred option (even if it’s the ethical option).

Costings Briefs:

In an effort to get a better understanding of the costing problems I saw with the canopy project for Ft Meade, I liaised with the head of costing to see if he could give myself and Ben a run down of how they do detailed cost analysis. This essentially turned into a CPD session and was extremely beneficial. He showed us how the contingency that is added is reduced  further into the project development to account for unknowns and level of clarity. He showed us his sources of info, from means spec to direct quotes and how his software builds up the analysis to include estimates for contractors overheads, sub-contractor overheads, contingencies and tax.

I have since seen his data spectacularly abused by the project managers on the building 45 project. “it says here base price of $1.8M which puts us on budget.”…..well if you want to go to bid with no contingency, expect no modifications or changes or unexpected surprises, for the prime to do all the work and not sub anything out AND get the best dollar on all quotes from a sole source……be my guest. The result will be no bids within your budget and a colossal waste of time effort and money.

Internal Quality Assurance:

I have finished preparing a Quality Assurance system for use within the structures section and delivered training to the group on how it is to be used, monitored and maintained. This involved getting to grips with all kinds of tasks that the section undertakes, from civil, military, domestic, overseas, bridge inspections, dam inspections and levee inspections to be able to come up with a method of making sure that a simple, effective, user friendly structure was achieved. There were several iterations with user feed-back before going firm and handing over the product which is now being used across the section.

Officer Professional Development:

All of the District Officers (14 in total) attended a mammoth OPD spanning 3 days and camping out in -6 degree weather. The development included a battlefield tour of the Gettysburg civil war site with specific reference to the principles of war (the yanks have 9 – and they aren’t really like ours), a tour of the 23 mile long recreational lake that USACE maintains at Raystown PA, a tour of the level 4 biomedical research facility that is currently under construction at Ft Detrick, a tour of the Raystown Dam facility, a tour of the Raystown hydro power station and a bunch of environmental briefs (it seems the environmentalists are hell-bent on killing stuff….perhaps it’s an american thing). The highlight was a dining in function which Ben and I coordinated with more than a hint of British tradition and an opportunity to make some presentations on behalf of PEW and MKC for the ongoing partnership between PEW and USACE. At first I was pretty pissed off when they decided to make me Mr Vice – until I found out the role is slightly different to back home. I was basically in charge of keeping the entertainment going and dishing out fines to all and sundry. It’s probably the first and last time I will ever get to give forfeits to full colonels and get away with it! The Commander here has said he would like to fly me back to do it again for next year’s OPD – and I might just try and hold him to it!

REVIT Weakness:

The penny dropped whilst working with some drawings that appeared to have varying details depending on which set you were looking at. Upon questioning this with the senior structural engineer it turns out that REVIT doesn’t deal with multiple skinned walls. As a result we appear to have a window over a column that has gone unnoticed for a while and a modification is required. I was immediately reminded of my earlier role as Project Engineer on a reservist center where exactly the same thing happened. Many RFIs were sent back to the architects and engineers at District who continued to reference the drawings that seemed to make sense (inner skin drawings) – whilst all the while on site there was quite clearly a beam showing through one of the windows (outer skin drawings). In the end it was the contractor’s fault and he made the mods himself. There were many bad words said by both parties on site about the apathy from District on that occasion – but I now see how this comes about. There is insufficient residual knowledge and training to ensure that this is resolved for future projects and I’m sure we’ll see it again.

Developing Future Engineers (and me!):

I have observed that there is a great divide between the experienced ‘old guys’ (of which there are 2) and the ‘young bloods’ in need of training (of which there are 5). The experienced guys are so overworked they have too little time to help develop the young bloods, but without the young bloods taking on more work, learning more and becoming more independent the situation will never change. Speaking with the head of department it seems they lost a load of experienced guys and not all were replaced. Those who did join the group are young graduates with little experience. I have outlined a plan with the boss (for after the thesis deadline) to start a mentoring process and to formalise the interaction between the experienced and the junior engineers. I have begun to find other engineers from outside of the group to be able to mentor the group and offer ‘lessons I wish they’d taught me before I got here’. I will report more as it takes shape.

And in other News:

It was great to welcome Nick Colvin to the fold and help him start getting his clan settled. My wife is still plotting on how she can kidnap his children. I am working on how we can harness the energy they produce as it might solve some of the worlds power issues. It has highlighted however, how little time is left before the big push and CPR.

It’s great to see all the new blogs appearing and to be kept up to date with the new round of activities – best of luck to you all.

The kids are in their last 48 hours with us before they go back to the UK and back to school. We just got back from a mini vacation with them to Canada where we visited Toronto and Niagra Falls. Lukas did some of the driving and Ulli and I did all of the panicking and screaming. (Just for Richard – road kill along the way included raccoon, deer, a bird (difficult to gauge other than a ‘big black one’) and you’ll be pleased to hear we saw our first flattened beaver in the carriageway. As spring is coming we also clocked several ‘yellow splats’ on the windscreen and some ‘red splats’ on the windscreen. I thought we’d discovered and immediately wiped out a new species of ‘purple splat’ but it turned out to be a red on yellow coincidence.)

I now realise that this blog is becoming thesis avoidance (whilst maintaining clear conscience because it’s work……honest) – so I will leave you be and get back to my scale model of ‘fluid mechanics for idiots’ using the sink bowl, a set of straws, a toilet roll tube and some sticky back plastic. Who said engineering can’t be fun?!?….although Ulli’s going to kill me when she sees the mess I’ve made.

McFry

Building 45 – Seismic Analysis:

Some really good progress was made on this one. We had an ’emergency’ meeting with the architects, fire safety guy (who fell asleep), electrical engineers and ‘the plumbing guy’. It turns out the scope of works has turned out to be way more costly than the Client anticipated. Gone are the heydays of bottomless Government coffers and it seems that people actually have to think long and hard about what they want nowadays…….still, completely undeterred by this the Client wants USACE to find the savings (of about $1M) whilst still hitting all of the criteria within the scope of works. I got the distinct impression that people have not been completely forthright with the Client as we appear to be continuing ‘at risk’ but with no defined boundaries. I am now very unpopular with the Architects from asking them to confirm exactly WHO is carrying this risk and what are the consequences of that risk. The vague response is that we’ll try and do what we can until the money runs out….well why wouldn’t we?

Some initial ideas for reducing the costs have been to re-use some old fridge doors instead of buying new ones as these will make an attractive ‘historical’ reference, a new boiler system has been canned and pipe dream of having a freight elevator to the basement has been dropped. As you might imagine – these amount to nowhere near the $1M target. Some more sensible ideas involve ‘packeting’ the works into discrete units that can be undertaken in individual chunks and funded separately. The whole of these packets make up the full scope of works, but will theoretically allow the client to undertake the work in stages, although I find it hard to believe given the complexity of Federal Acquisition.

From a structural perspective this really sucks because the building is so old  – but still in use (thus limiting what I could actually get to see). It has been chopped and changed so many times and has suffered significant water damage in the past. Only partial areas have been uncovered for inspection and some significant defects are manifest. Therefore the full extent of the defects can not be fully ascertained – nay – will not be fully ascertained until the contract is in full swing, which will likely lead to additional costs….which the Client does not have. My report will have to contain strict caveats to that effect and I just hope they manage to iron out the colour of their money soon. On the plus side I will get a chance to go and work with the budgeting guys to learn how to make a million dollars disappear.

As for the seismic analysis itself – that was fairly straight forward but required a lot of interpretation and judgement. The only areas that it really falls short on (other than water damaged and rotting floor joists of unknown magnitude) is the fact that there are no ties for any diaphragm members to the masonry – which should theoretically be a fairly simple fix. I have a nice pile of calculations and codes to wade through which should keep me quiet for a while now.

Dam Structural Issues:

It seems the structures department is bracing itself for an inbound Request for Equitable Adjustment (REA) where a contractor tries to tell the evil government that they were diddled out of cash and that they want it back. I had some fairly extensive exposure to this side of life on Phase 2 and so I had a lots of suggestions for them based on this experience. The structures department tends not to get too heavily involved in these but this particular one involves a contractor specifically going against their recommendations – incurring extra costs and now they want to try and turn it around. Whilst I’m happy to get involved – I’d rather not as I’m kind of treading old ground and would rather seek pastures new for Phase 3.

On a related note – the REA I was involved in has been progressed using the tools I developed. The contractor is attempting to claim $3.2M – but the Government reckons only $500k is valid. I will try and get to sit in on the negotiations when they happen.

Happy C-Bomb Day

In Phase 2 I whinged about a particular member of staff in the Huntsville office who’s general attitude to work and responsibilities was stopping my team from being able to do their jobs effectively (and she earned the accolade of ‘C-Bomb’ from my guys). I was continually having to scour the USACE procedures and quote from the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) to continually justify the roles and responsibilities of my staff (We don’t normally have to do this – but because the project was a joint effort – responsibilities became a bit blurred at the edges). Anyway – I singled the lady out as being the single biggest risk to the project and complained for ever to my line manager to get him to tackle the Huntsville office about it…..and he tactfully avoided the issue and left us to run the gauntlet. My parting comment was that if a cog in the machine is broken – then we need to fix it or replace it. Meaning we either need to train this person or move them on. My ConRep and Labour Rep both called me on the same day when they discovered that the C-Bomb has been sacked! Not that this had anything to do with me you see – she clearly upset everyone. The real surprise is actually that it has been proven statistically that here in the US you are more likely to die of natural causes whilst under Government employ than to ever be sacked – so this is kind of big…….although this news is not engineering-y in any way – it did cheer me up….I also know it wasn’t just me.

CPD:

A company called CINTEC (who also has a UK base) delivered CPD for our entire department on their masonry anchors and reinforcement systems. They have a ‘sock’ sheath around steel reinforcement that allows them to create custom anchors by pumping grout into the socks. Good simple stick and string engineering.

Structural Framing:

One of the junior engineers had produced some loading data for a new design which was to be sent out to a contractor to run computational modelling for new roof trusses on a building that I am not allowed to know about (for security reasons). The chief structural engineer was checking it over and was not happy with it and asked me to go through a last.minute.dot.com framing exercise with him to ensure we have sensible numbers. At first I thought ‘what would bat man do?’ but punching him in the face and diving out of the window didn’t seem the right option, so then I thought ‘what the the Farmer do?’ and a cunning scheme was developed on the whiteboard. The only thing that was missing was Steve Dollimore to sit at the back and nonchalantly inform us of any several mistakes….but i think it was sound. Our structures guy was complaining that many graduates do not have a good understanding of structural framing and thus – it drove home the importance of the exercise we did on the PET course…..even if I did curse it at the time.

Structural Canopy:

A design has been produced in house for a canopy above a series of guard booths at the (shhh don’t tell anyone) NSA at Fort Meade. In order to get some more money type questions buzzing in my head I asked if I could help with the take offs and subsequent costing etc. First phase is done – will go sit with the bean counters afterwards to see what they do. First observation is that there is an awful lot of assumption going on as to who is meant to be providing what information. I imagine that if the bean counter is not on top of his game then we may be missing big chunks out of our initial cost estimating process….which might explain why every single project we do seems to go over budget. Will report more next time.

….And in other news:

I have been interviewed by the Public Affairs Office so they can run an article about those dapper chaps that are floating around the office. (Conehead Jim – this refers to Ben and I before you hit me with bouts of sarcasm!). I kept telling the lady to ask Ben about his very British pass-time of ‘Dogging’, as this would make for interesting reading amongst our audience. Unfortunately she looked up the word dogging on google and has decided that this is not a suitable topic for USACE to promote – although she has offered some good advice on a park and ride near Westminster, Maryland.

And finally – if you were wondering about the heading of this week’s blog – the wife bought us Salsa lessons on Groupon for Christmas. We went back for our second of six lessons and whilst I went ahead to use the bathroom, Ulli took a swig from a bottle of coke (outside the establishment) before screwing on the lid and putting it in her handbag. The manager saw this and confronted her upon entering. After going through several variations of bull**it about it being illegal he physically went into her bag and confiscated the bottle (even the security staff in our Government building aren’t allowed to do this). By the time I returned from the bathroom Ulli had come to the conclusion (rightfully) that the manager was going to ‘get it’…….we were invited to leave and never return…… I know America is a big place, but we need to pace ourselves for fear of running out of drinking holes before July.

Creating the staging area.

Placing the armour stone

Expansion of the dike

Dredging conducted to generate draft for vessels. Dredge material used to expand dikes.

Collapsed Bunker: After releasing the report back to the guys in Afghanistan I wanted to use the event as a lessons learned for wider consumption. Being of the military mind it is obvious that this is not possible without security vetting and authorisation, so I put in the request and it all went ominously quiet. I eventually discovered that one of the Corps Lawyers has been delivering ethics training, citing an example of a British officer who divulged potential security threats to outside contractors! Furious doesn’t even come close. Having put the guy straight he has now circulated a formal apology to all who received the ‘training’. My co-workers are stunned that I managed to get an apology from the Office of Council – they have a history of getting everyone’s back up apparently. Good news is that we should be on track to release limited information for wider circulation soon.

Poplar Island: My investigations for subsequent cell construction has thrown up the fact that we will need to adapt the construction sequence to include a double coffer dam as opposed to a single one as has been historically used. Traditionally, a staging area is built and then extended out to form the outline of the dike (photos not available at this time – I need to post from work). Once completed, dredge material is pumped in and excess water siphoned off using a spillway until the interior of the island is useable. At this stage a coffer is built on the external portion and the inlet structure is installed. To use a dual purpose structure as proposed, we will need to place the structure before the inner section of the cell is complete, meaning a wet gap on both sides, so I need to come up with a suitable plan to execute this without affecting the ongoing cell wall construction.

Building 45 Renovation: Myself and my mentor have been called in to help come up with the designs for the renovation of an existing brick masonry bearing wall building with heavy timber roof trusses and solid wood decking supporting a slate tile roof . Apparently anything over 100 years old is a big deal around here – I sometimes forget how ‘young’ this country is! Either way we need to get in there to identify the original construction methods before we can get stuck into the juicy stuff. It’s a much wider project with involvement of pretty much all the disciplines, but Preston and I are to address seismic and structural issues.

Levee Screening Projects: These are killers. I sit in a panel of experts to appraise the condition of the levee structures in order to help prioritise  funding for repairs. We have a hydrologist, a geologist, a civil works rep and myself acting as the structural engineer. Between us we pour through all of the technical data, reports and photographic evidence to grade the levees. It’s like applying the ‘so what’ in the 7 questions. Some elements of the existing structures do not conform to the guidance, but it is down to us to determine what the real implications are and what the severity is likely to be. Our results will determine if townships remain within the protection scheme, whether home owners will be affected by insurances and what the priorities will be for funding (or removal of funding). It’s long and tedious, but important.

Officer Professional Development: I have volunteered to organise the next quarter’s OPD for the USACE after forging links with Philadelphia district and the crew of one of their biggest dredge vessels. This will essentially turn into the equivalent of OPD. It’s early days yet and I have more to coordinate as the ship has been called up for emergency work. In the meantime I have also volunteered to present at this quarter’s OPD on the Corps of Royal Engineers and the exchange program itself to help our cousins understand why we have folks with funny uniforms and posh accents floating around.

Other News: Enjoyed a vacation with the boys home for Christmas – so we had a long weekend in New York. Amazing place – some great photos to show for it and my wallet took a huge kick in the nuts…..but it was worth it. Evidence has also started to materialise of my involvement with the christmas corrol service. I now appear to be a regular feature on the front page of the USACE intranet…..all positive!…promise! – and before you ask – yes I’m normally lunging!

 Mon 3 Dec – Fri 7 Dec 12

The Transition

I have successfully arranged a time split for phase 3 meaning I get some access to Civil Works projects and also Engineering Division stuff – which is great. Both teams are very good to work with so far and all seem well motivated and understanding of the Development Objective requirements. There’s just the usual IT type stuff to tie up and I’m under way.

Civil Works:

Poplar Island

The poplar Island project is a ‘win – win’ flagship project for USACE. One of the key roles of USACE is to maintain all the navigation channels which involves a lot of dredging. They have been working for many years now with the Ports Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and other local stakeholders and have been using the dredge material to re-build Poplar Island which was almost completely eroded away through natural means. This means that nature habitats are created instead of generating pollution by dumping at sea. They claim that savings are made as less fuel is required to ship the material to deep sea, but when you look at how expensive the project is in general – I don’t see this argument holding water (pardon the pun).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poplar_Island_(Chesapeake_Bay)

For this project I am looking at the hydraulic structures that make up the spillways and inlets to see how they could be improved. I made a visit to the island this week to do an initial survey of the structures. I have laid out the structure of what I aim to achieve here and have met with all of the stakeholders respectively. I will shortly be entering a detailed research phase.

Engineering:

Damaged Bunker

I have been responding to a call for assistance from Afghanistan. Our American cousins decided they needed to build bunkers to house MLRS (yes…British MLRS). The required clear spans are too wide for any of the ‘off the shelf’ designs and so they got a contractor to design and build a bespoke system.

They used HESCO Mil7s stacked up to build a wall, onto which a concrete ring beam was placed before adopting a 3ft deep lightweight truss with blast protection (HESCO Mil5s) on the roof. A 3-bay option was approved and the design has been stamped by a professional engineer (yet to be determined who this was). As they were finishing the roof of the final bay, a catastrophic collapse occurred, injuring several people, three of which had to be med-evac’d.

The US Sapper Captain has to develop a report and an investigation and has requested our help. We have had the world’s supply of photographic evidence returned to us to pour over along with the designs. It’s clearly the lightweight trusses that have given way and many construction errors are visible (mixed use of screws, endemic over-tightening of screws, strap locations at the same place on every truss – potentially inducing a block failure etc).

My first area of research turned up some interesting data. It turns out they are mis-using the HESCO cells entirely. The Mil7s are not even meant to be double stacked – let alone have the additional roof weight on there. Many of the ground level cells are showing signs of extreme distress – irrespective of the fact that the truss collapsed. Along with all of the observations about construction, choice of materials in the truss – I am recommending that they tear down the remaining structure as opposed to trying to fix it with a recommendation that they adopt a more traditional design that incorporates an internal frame of some sort.

The initial report will go next week and I have recommended that we produce a sanitized lessons learned  for wider distribution. I’m also trying to get some of the pictures released for HESCO to use in their education packages. I’ll post some pics once I get the all clear.

Other News

So all in all a very exciting, busy and productive first 4 days. I have managed to wangle a slot on a USACE event in Philadelphia tomorrow so I will have some new turf to explore.

I got to my new cubicle and started chopsing off about all the crap in there. I was throwing out masses of stuff – it’s as if someone just left and didn’t come back. Then I opened a draw and found stacks of food and coffee creamer and bowls that were growing mould before I really had a good whinge about whichever dirty minger was responsible for this. At this point the new boss came and apologized and tried to put it delicately that the guy I was talking about had recently committed suicide…..and nobody had been able to bring themselves to clear out the cube properly yet…… “So he won’t be needing the creamer then?” I replied brightly – happy in the knowledge that all this stuff is up for grabs…..not sure how well he took it. I am refraining from drawing a chalk outline on the floor….that’s a little dark even for me.

Ulli’s birthday this weekend – time to go out disco dancing Borat style!

Also – today is Nicolaus….like a mini Christmas that the Germans celebrate….not sure why or what the significance is. Traditionally you give very small gifts and everyone is happy…..so I look forward to a new pair of socks when I get home.

HAPPY NICOLAUS!

C4ISR:

Now that I am gearing up for the shift to District I am actively trying to remove myself from this project. The vast quantities of information need to be in the Office Engineer’s head and not mine otherwise it will be lost. I have continued to sift the info and formulate the facts relating to this claim which is now pushing over $4M. The OE really needs some more manpower to be able to get through this in tact.

EDC Solarwall:

Coming along really nicely. I urged the contractor to switch his schedule and we’re all really glad he did now. Access to a high wall section is required and the ground is soft and has a heavy cross fall. His rigs trip out if he exceeds the safe working envelope which has now proven that he can’t do the job with the tools at hand (Glad this came to light now and not a the end of the project – he still has options to tackle other sections before his time runs out). We’re now looking at building a temporary road using our old friend Tensar. Unfortunately the contractor doesn’t really know what he’s doing with it and the bottom fell out of his world when I systematically picked the plan to pieces. His re-show was not much better so this could be an interesting stand off as I won’t let him continue unless he can either prove his engineering or establish the world’s most robust mitigation plans.

The working relationship with the Huntsville Contract Specialist has broken down all together. I feel they are good at the contract side of things but they are so far removed from the coal face they have no idea about what the impact of their decisions are. USACE has developed training courses (PROSPECT) based on ensuring that procedures match the Federal Acquisition Regulation. All of the office procedures are built up on this basis. Huntsville produced a very ‘lean’ contract and are sticking to their interpretation of the words so rigidly that it means several of my team can no longer fulfill their duties as required …meaning that the measures put in place to enforce compliance to the FAR are now defunct by someone else’s interpretation of other sections of the FAR. I’ve raised it though the correct channels and we came close to pulling the plug all together as a result….but for now I carry on regardless but have to be careful to caveat everything and reference all decisions back to the final decision of the Huntsville office…..I’d love for the department of labor to pay a surprise visit.

I also signed off on my first electrical submittal this week….very proud…so if the whole place burns down…you haven’t seen me….right?

EDC Roofing Project:

The pre-construction meeting has been held and already there are some clashes with the Solarwall project. I need to ensure verification and testing occurs but none of the air handling units on the roof work. The units are to be replaced under the new roof contract so there is no appetite to spend money on the repairs. The maintenance guys are saying they can fix, but only in 2 month’s time, leaving a very small window for my guys to remain on their schedule….but I’ll be gone by then! I’m eventually handing this over to Mike Notto (an ex Westpointer) and I suppose any legacy of this will filter down to Nick when he arrives.

Time for less typing on a Friday night and more wine with the wife….that makes much more sense. Stay safe folks.

All clear. We stocked up on everything the man on the telly recommended and while other areas of Maryland were without power for days and others got 3 feet of snow – it seemed to just forget about us. My weekend plans to go to New York are utterly cancelled though – seeing as most of it is without power and the subway systems are completely flooded. They closed down the subways days before the storm hit and essentially crippled the city – I later found out this was due to the thousands of homeless people living down there that needed to be evacuated……they could have used one disaster to solve another….but perhaps that’s the squaddie humor kicking in.

USACE deployed the mobile command and control unit – headed up by our own Mr Brian Walton. He’s still deployed and assisting with the coordination efforts. I applied to do the Emergency Response course a while back but the boss reckoned it wasn’t in line with my DOs (she’s right – I just wanted the jolly) but with hindsight as I was tucked up safe and warm with the Mrs, I decided it was for the best.

I have been doing some coordination work with the Hancock to facilitate the jobs for Nick’s arrival – I’m sure he’ll have a much smoother integration than I did. The HQ project is starting to gear up so there’s some good scope for PE work. The Roofing project should be in full swing ot get some technical aspects under his belt and then there’s a bunch of levee projects that will also make benefit of his skills. I also think they’ve let out all their jokes about englishisms out on me so he’s less likely to be bullied.

The C4ISR is ongoing and tediously complicated. The Office Engineer has embraced the tools that I have updated recently and is making full use of them. We need more staff to get through this!

The Solarwall project was on hold throughout the storm which gave me a chance to catch up on submittals. The biggest problem is actually still with our sister office in Alabama. The biggest cause of wasted time appears to be from the person that wrote the contract (which has been found to hold many holes and mistakes by the Harrisburg Office). It’s as if they are defending poor decisions out of pride or spite and have generated needless work for our office. I have formally requested that the issues currently under dispute (see previous blog) are now to be raised at Contracting Officer level. My boss is supporting all of my observations and conclusions to the point that they are prepared to sever ties with the Huntsville Office if they continue like this….it’s like a soap opera.

My final gripe of late was that having agreed that a temporary solution is required for the Albright flood gate (which managed to not float away in the storm) it appears that nobody is willing to be held accountable. Apparently if nobody is responsible, nobody can be sued if it goes wrong. I find this utterly irresponsible  As things stand it’s easy enough to blame the previous contractors that built the gate. I have since been assured by my boss that the correct channels have been made aware and that the relevant plans are in place….even if they don’t know who’s meant to be executing the fixes or where the materials will come from. It’s just wonderful that nobody died.

I have volunteered to go and do another schools presentation. This time it is for Highschool students who have done introductory calculus and are making decision on which avenue to take in their prospective engineering careers. As long as they don’t ask me any calculus questions we’ll all get along just fine. This is another STEM project and I will be able to re-use a lot of the previous stuff I’ve done.

Other News: Right – enough of this – I’m on leave until the end of the week when it’s back to reality. In the meantime I am happy to report that Ulli has now been offered a full time job with the networking agency. We look forward to thanksgiving where we are required to eat lots and watch football….some biblical thing I think.

Also – it appears that Obama remains as Commander in Chief – hopefully the locals will calm down a bit now it’s all over. But if anything goes wrong – at least we know who to blame.

C4ISR

Oh crap – be careful what you wish for. We requested that the contractor clarifies every single aspect of his Request for Equitable Adjustment and boy did we get it. A giant box full evidence and exhibits to prove that he is owed just over $3M by the US Government. If you stack up the A4 double sided papers, they reach over 3 feet in height. This is the amount of paperwork that now needs to be sorted and appraised and with only three people to do this, a coordinated and concurrent method is required. Enter stage left, McFry’s patented analysis tools. A request is in with the tech guys to re-visit their first (failed) attempt at generating the network environment needed to host the tools securely. The case is also to be sent directly to the USACE District commander to see if he can add some weight to it. It is clear that I won’t be around to see this one put to bed before phase 3 but at least I can still shape the response and begin the evaluations.

The subsequent work will now all be used to generate a negotiation plan to find some middle ground. Many of the contractor’s claims are sheer faced cheek and others he is definitely in the right. The grey areas are the ones that will cause us concern and this is where the coordinated thought is required. Further help and advice will be required from the Lawyers at District to keep everything in context.

EDC Solarwall

Relationships have now completely broken down and what was once a harmonious working routine is now painful and fraught with challenges…….but not between USACE and the Contractor…the difficulty is between the Huntsville and Harrisburg offices. Huntsville conducted the scoping and wrote the contract before awarding the job. We are responsible for the local execution of the contract, but after finding a number of errors with the contract (some of which could put us in hot water in legal and financial terms), certain personnel at the Huntsville office have become quite ‘anti’ to say the least. Some examples are as follows:

DAVIS BACON WAGE RATES: The department of Labo(u)r regularly publishes minimum wage rates that vary by trade and geographical location. These are to be published in site offices so the workers can compare what they are being paid to what the law states they should be receiving. This is enforced by myself and the Construction Representative through employee interviews. I was asked to check that the rates in the contract were the correct rates for the time of signature on the contract, and I found they were not. Upon raising this to the Huntsville office they just replied that ‘it’s ok – they signed the contract so it’s legal.’ After a lot of asking around and researching more thoroughly – we don’t have a leg to stand on. They must change the rates and recompense the workers accordingly (and one of the trades has a $14/hour difference!). It took about six attempts at raising it and threats to raise it to the contracting Officer directly before anything was done about it. Since then, everything I’ve raised with the Huntsville office is met with combative responses and unhelpful jibes…..All I did was point out they’d made a mistake.

PAYROLL INFORMATION: In order to confirm the information in the wage interviews (see above) I need to see the actual payroll information so as to corroborate all the figures before I can give the nod to the Contracting Officer’s Representative to actually authorise payments. I included this information in the Pre-Construction meeting and the minutes and the contractor was more than happy to provide the information. For some reason Huntsville decided that only the Contracting Officer needed this info and ordered the contractor not to send it to me or the ConRep. Long story short – we couldn’t approve the pay application and the contractor was not paid on time (Through no fault of his own I might add). There then ensued another protracted bout of quoting clauses from the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) before I finally had to spell out (and I was very pleased with this) exactly how and why we needed the info and exactly where in the FAR it states our case. The person who takes pride in reminding everyone that they are a ‘contracting specialist’ had to accede. All in all this was a painful and time consuming process which was ultimately very unproductive in terms of project progress….so I had to raise it higher.

THE MOTHER CONTRACT: Another long one shortened – we asked for the mother contract and we were told we didn’t need it. After questioning how we are expected to execute the contract without an actual copy of the contract we still had no joy. Had to find an alternative friendly forces within Huntsville to obtain it. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see why this is not good. After seeking advice on the actual contract itself the response was a resounding ‘that’s a bit thin’ and ‘that would never have made it past first draft at District’. Having compared it to other contracts I also see how they achieve economy of effort by simple referring to FAR clauses instead of actually using them in the contract. It also appears though that they don’t read the clauses they quote!

1413 – CONTRACTOR INDEMNITIES AND INSURANCES: Again a pissing competition over why the Harrisburg Office is demanding certain procedures to be undertaken (because it’s the law) and Huntsville claim they never have to do them. More highlighter pen all over the FAR to prove our procedures aren’t just made up resulted in more blunt silences from the Huntsville crew.

Conclusion – the Huntsville team are more accustomed to working with service contracts where many of the issues we highlighted to them are never needed. There are some whacking great holes in the contract and now the contractor is aware of them. I feel another Request for Equitable Adjustment coming on…..and a headache. The working relationship between the offices is less than productive and severely unhealthy for the project. I put my thoughts down in a report for my boss to argue out with them. It came very close to us just pulling the plug all together and giving the whole thing back to Huntsville to figure out….and it’s a long drive from Alabama.

On the work front I had to issue a letter of concern about progress – the rate of work doesn’t match with the schedule. I’m not overly worried though because they are getting faster all the time as they get used to the procedures and materials. They also have no concurrent activity in the schedule and there is loads of scope to crash the programme.

Albright Avenue Closure Repair

This was a great opportunity to look at the levee systems and how the gate closures are designed. At the Albright location it was found that an error in construction drawings made it past the checking phase. (Design was good – drawing was clearly cut and pasted and tweaked badly). The finished product is a flood protection gate that floats…..even a PET student can see the irony in that. Work covered an appraisal of whether the choice of gate was correct, reason why it happened the way it did, how likely a significant flood event is (statistically) and what short term and long term fixes we can offer….. The result of my statistical analysis was that we are already late for the next significant event and that the latest it is likely to happen is August 2013. Since the report was finished we have the small issue of Hurricane Sandy rapidly approaching our doorstep…..it’s obviously sheer coincidence, but I hope they got the memo.

Neil – some pics I owe you…

Other News

The Embassy called me in to attend compulsory briefings in Washington DC in relation to Army 2020, MS briefs and the role and agenda for liaison officers and exchange officers. Not being entirely sure how an engineering exchange officer fits into the same category as an LO or EO I was still keen to attend just to feel like I’m part of the Army still. Ben wasn’t on the distribution so I subtly snitched on him (with his consent) and it was nice to catch up in DC. Also met Major Wayne Meek (PQE) who is working in Alabama (or the like), I completely ‘dissed’ the old CRE (Now General Le-Gris) by having one of those “you look familiar” moments (thanks Ben for rescuing me) and I also bumped into Major Rich Reese and Colonel Charlie Thackway – other Engineers from my past. So all in all – a very nice re-union…..depending on who you ask.

Just a thought – is it worth giving the next round of PQE attachment folk access to the blog so they can see the exploits and experiences so far? Either way – can someone please pass on mine and Ben’s e-mail addresses to Nick? I’m sure we’d both be happy to start comms now if he has any questions at all. The Ausie folks may also have some good early pointers?

Hurricane Sandy is reportedly going to smash the East coast within the next 24 hours. We have all been placed on a state of emergency and have been told to expect to be without electricity and running water for days. I have set up a basher in the bushes and have been stockpiling beer for days. Ulli on the other hand is due to fly to Germany on Monday night – so this could all turn into ging-gang at the airport. Walmart is sold out of batteries and flash lights and I have essentially been out and purchased a big pile of stuff that I actually already own in storage back in the UK.

Really sick of the elections…..please kill me…. – oops,  almost forgot – be careful what you wish for right? See you after the storm.

C4ISR

Discussions with schedule specialist show little opportunity for progress without further input from contractor who has now requested another 3 week extension. The Office Engineer is adamant that if they delay any further that he will throw the whole thing out. I am skeptical that he has the authority to do so, however. My understanding is that under the Federal Acquisition Regulations, if the contractor is owed money he has the right to pursue it. I take the OE’s rants with a pinch of salt.

An additional submission from sub contractor for further adjustment has been received and has hit $1.5M – bringing total claim to $3M. This is a Big No No – as essentially it is asking the sub-contractor to do business directly with the Client. I have asked that the Prime certifies the request, but am curious as to whether or not they will – as I believe the sub has been ripping off the Prime. Main contractor must sign off on it before we can do anything with it…..it’s getting bigger!

ECIP Lighting Projects

Sat in on meetings reference energy savings produced from ongoing lighting project. Monitoring shows that project should pay for itself within 5 years…..just in time for the buildings to be de-commissioned!

Ashley Reservist Centre

Joy of joys – this is coming to an amicable solution. The petrographic testing has shown that in essence the concrete on the loading ramps is sound and therefore all of the problems witnessed on site should be able to be resolved using cosmetic upgrades….or so I thought. Subsequent concrete break strength tests (taken from other areas) are now showing that three quarters of the most recent test results are below strength. Why won’t this project die!?!? So we now have the Corps lab saying it’s too weak, the batch plant tests saying it’s fine and the independent lab tests (which have been accused by the corps lab of falsifying results) also saying they are fine. Additional testing from the independent lab is inbound soon and a decision will be made by the Contracting Officer’s Representative as to whether we pursue this further.

EDC Solarwall

I am still rattling the head of security to provide workable policy instead of just putting up barriers and being awkward. I ended up writing a policy which has now been adopted temporarily until they write a more comprehensive one (which I’m told may look very familiar when it comes back) but now we’re having bun fights about how staff are processed for security checking to actually get them on site now. Having upset the head of security a little more publicly this time I don’t think I’ll be taken for a ride-along in a police car any time soon.

Having extrapolated current progress on the wall against the various schedule items I see we are about to start slipping behind on schedule. Ordinarily I would prepare a letter of concern, but seeing as this contractor has been excellent at turning things around (and I see plenty of potential for concurrent activity etc) I saw no reason to escalate so quickly. I wrote a formal letter asking them to simply explain their plans for the COR to reassure him that we have no reason to worry. The COR likes the verbiage and intends to use this approach on other projects before slapping their wrists with the letter of concern. It’s more of a friendly prod while relationships are all still good……and there aren’t many of those around here! I intend to keep it that way as long I we can.

The Department of Labor issues minimum wage rates for various skilled laborers and these get updated quite regularly. It was noticed that the rates that are being used do not match the department of labour rates for the time the contract was signed. This means an administrative modification is required to the contract. Problem 1 is that the mistake was made by another office and must be rectified by the other office. The staff there seem not only unwilling to bring it to the attention of the Contracting Officer but also slightly confused as to why I’m banging a drum about it. (It falls to this office to do the pay interviews etc and we’ll have the fun of fixing it.) Problem 2 is that the rates themselves appear to vary quite badly, meaning there’s a strong chance we will need more federal funding to make sure the workers are paid their dues. More fun to follow.

Having fun with review of wind calcs and seismic loading calcs!

Am reviewing submittal of pay requests and processing them but keep finding that info is missing (but probably sent to the wrong government office). This is bad because the contractor appears to have two masters (a design centre and a construction centre) and neither are on the same page. This whole concept looked great on paper! I also find that we are re-learning the same mistakes over again form the last ‘joint’ venture.

Albright Avenue Closure Repair

This is a new involvement fro me on a levee project where the USACE designed a rolling flood gate…..which appears to float in the event of flooding! All just in time for a TMR. Site visits and historical data collection abounds.

Other News

Was nice to spend some time back in UK with family as my father is not too well. Typically my wife ended up in hospital in the USA while I was in the UK. Impeccable timing you could say. Thankfully all is well. Just as well as owe don’t have any life insurance on her.

The political machines are in full spin cycle in the run up to the elections. I’m pretty sure our voting cards that came through were sent by mistake.

I have developed a habit of seeing things in the shared calendar and inviting myself along…..which then turn out to be the commander’s visits. He doesn’t seem to mind. Most recently was a visit to Poplar Island – a man-made habitat for wildlife made up of dredge material from the Chesapeake bay. I’m keeping my eyes open to see if he’s hosting cocktails – see how far I can push this.

Stay safe y’all