Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Took some leave while the kids were here and took the opportunity to visit Washington DC and Baltimore to see the museums and monuments etc. Apparently we’re still just as embarrassing to the kids as ever. Lukas is now home safe and we pack Adi off tomorrow so that naked house can resume.

HQ PROJECT

The design has been out with the contractors for a while and bids have been received. They are to be assessed on value engineering criteria as well as price but there has been a large number of RFI’s submitted that need to be answered. The majority are to do with geotechnical issues and uncertainties with the piling requirements. We have a group called Geotech within USACE who did the original design and a lot of the cross-issues that related to contractual issues have been ironed out. The next step will be to consolidate the RFI’s and distribute and release ammendments to specifications and drawings to ensure that the contractors have an opportunity to revise their submissions before the final award is released.

Key issue at the minute is that the original specification stated ‘no blasting’ for the foundations etc but on a subsequent issue the wrong document specification was adjusted and released. This had 5 pages of specs on how blasting will take place. The facility big wigs are not willing to allow blasting to take place as we are near to a live airfield and family housing and the use of the work ‘explosives’ seem to make them jumpy. We have arranged a meeting for next monday to try and convince them that we can actually blast without knocking aeroplanes out of the sky or killing small children. The main reason for this is that the project is likely to suffer to the tune of $2M if we now deny the contractors this method of removing rock.

ASHLEY RESERVIST CENTRE

More developments with insufficient quality control with concrete pours on behalf of the contractor. USACE now needs to work out if they make the contractor rip out existing sections and re-pour and how the contractor can begin to rectify their actions. Am considering offering my services to look back though the records and come up with proposals for how we proceed with minimal impact to the project. (request advice from PEW staff as to whether this is a browny point scoring opportunity for review.)

There are also issues with the proposed method of nailing ceiling boards to corrugated steel sheets…..apparently nails don’t go through corrugated steel too well. I immediately started to try and come up with various suggestions on how we could overcome this, but this is a big no no. USACE avoids at all cost telling the contractor how he should do something because if this subsequently turns out to be a problem, they have no comeback, whereas if the contractor submits a proposal and USACE agrees to HIS proposal, the contractor still carries the risk. I am now potentially in a bizarre situation where I can suggest ideas to the contractor, who would then have to suggest them back to me, so that I might approve them……I’m sure there’s a catch somewhere in there!

SOLARWALL PROJECT

I have also been getting my head around the Solar Wall project on building 2001 here on the base. We had some RFI’s for structural as built drawings for the racking systems inside the warehouse (as they support the roof) and also for wall construction details so that the structural engineers can demonstrate that the existing walls can support the solarwall product. This was initially passed to the Client (Defence Logistics Agency) as they actually hold all drawings pertaining to the facility. The structural engineers are not content that they have sufficient information from the older sections of the building and want to work from ‘assumptions’. The Client is not willing to spend more time looking through their historical records (as they have spent many hours already and are busy). The structural engineers are unwilling to send someone in person to look for additional drawings as they are in Texas and the Client is now understandably peeved.

I have been discussing other hierarchy issues and have been trying to understand where various responsibilities lie and where different bucks stop. In the end I still get the ‘shared responsibility’ line and have decided that I will push all matters but in consultation with the others before addressing the contractors direct. Ultimately I wouldn’t be willing to allow the design to be ‘proven’ with such vague assumptions and will insist on some additional action on behalf of the structural engineer (SE). In the spirit of mutual cooperation I will arrange for myself and another project engineer to try and tackle the drawings issue provided the SE sends a local representative to assist. I will also investigate the feasibility of removing existing wall sections to see how they were built. If this turns out to be a 10 man and a crane type of job then it’s probably too much effort. If it’s 2 men and a screwdriver then the SE can get his rep down here pronto….especially seeing as the total value of this is $3.8M and it would be unwise to allow him to carry such risk. I have held a separate meeting with the client to get him to confirm that he will be willing to assist in any reasonable way with the removal of existing wall panels. This meeting also revealed that the Client has undertaken a similar project previously but without the assistance of USACE as the dollar value was below the threshold. This means we now must extract as much history and lessons learned as possible. If this were a civilian client this would not be a problem because it’s in their best interests from a financial point of view, but for a government agency as a Client, this is less of a concern because the money is not theirs and for them it is good to be able to offload the responsibility to a third party.

Other developments include refining of the submission requirements and that some initial submittal requirements can be deleted all together. These are things such as environmental assessments and historical building impacts. The whole project is aimed at improving energy efficiency and by definition it is a inappropriate to try and justify or score points in a discrete manner. The whole thing is a big tick in the box so no further work is required. Historically the building is deemed by the client to have no significance and therefore no heritage is affected. My next step will be to press the contractor for a revised schedule and to highlight key areas that need lead times and also to tie in the schedule with his submittal requirements.

IN CAR COMMUTING ACTIVITIES

Tried to see if the telephone messaging option for blogging would allow me to save time and make better use of the daily commute….it is not recommended. I will stick to e-mail to update blogging.

My dead animal road kill observational skills are improving. I can now readily identify rabbits, foxes, skunks and possums. I am unsure about a particularly chubby looking thing that might be a Marmot of some sort. Will have to wait until another one dies as they don’t age well in the highway.

Mr Country and Western singer man is starting to get to me now. Today he sang about how he can leave his door unlocked and how cool it is to drive a pickup truck (and actually have a use for it – unlike the city folk). Yesterday he was unhappy because because his wife left him (assuming it’s his wife – he referred to her as ‘my girl’) but at least his faithful dog is still with him. A while back he was actually happy because he got some sort of new tractor but I assume ‘his girl’ has left with the tractor as he was particularly miserable about the whole affair. I normally get through about half a song before I have to turn it off – I am afraid I may build up a tolerance to country music….and that’s not cool.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

I am now the proud owner of a Maryland driver’s licence having gone through the indignity of having to take my test again. It took all I had to mask the bad habits picked up over the years. The worst bit was trying to pretend I knew where the wind-screen wiper controls were in the wife’s car when it started raining during the test. The examiner probably wondered why I kept switching the over-drive on and off, but hey, it’s not a fail criteria. The whole thing did almost came to an unceremonious end when prior to the test I presented the clerk with my 3-hour drug and alcohol awareness certificate (framed) and she realised the contempt I hold for the whole system. She’s clearly very proud of their bureaucracy.

Until next time.

McFry

3-6 Apr 12

So – we don’t appear to recognise religious holidays over here, but never mind, we’ll make up for it.

Progress has now been made with log on details for the CAC and I now have access to an official e-mail address and some of the compulsory training.

Further progress has been made on the driver’s licence front. My wife, as she is German, has no need to take her test due to a reciprocal agreement between states…..and even though I did my test in Germany – muggins here has retake it anyway. I attended a compulsory 3 HOUR class on drug and alcohol awareness and let’s just say it was a good job I’d already had the suicide prevention training at work! The test is booked for 18 April in Annapolis (about an hour and a half drive away.)

I bumped into some of the sub-contractors for the Solar-wall project during lunch break and after the initial ‘oh crap – it’s the Client!’ sort of introductions they finally opened up a little to just chat about projects and work for the Government. I discovered that having just got my head around the whole ‘let’s spend $3.5M in the name of science to see if this stuff works.’ it now turns out there is another existing building with this system already installed. Upon asking why we aren’t just measuring energy usage from this building compared to an equivalent sized building on the base, nobody could say….and I’m now asking again why we’re spending so much money making sure the national debt is kept up to world expectations. I’m probably going to get punched soon for pointing this stuff out all the time.

We had our first RFI’s in on the solar-wall project relating to the construction of the internal racking system which actually forms the structural support for the roof itself. The structural engineer needs to prove that the existing walls and structure can hold the proposed solar-wall and needs certain ‘as built’ info. I have done some digging around and it turns out that the whole roof is to be completely replaced in the near future….so now I’m concerned as to whether or not the structural engineer needs to be worrying about this at all and if it would be better to get the structural engineer from the solar-wall project and the structural engineer from the roof project to liaise directly to save on potential cross-purposes and wasted effort. The issue arises because for maintenance contracts, the Defence Logistics Agency runs and manages it’s own projects, no matter how expensive, but for new works projects of over $750K they have to use USACE for the contract administration and quality assurance and quality control and hence the oversights. Hence we have two projects on the same building that involve different organisations. I have since booked in a meeting with the engineers at DLA to further orientate myself with the local procedures and will also go and see the overall project manager from the DLA for the solar-wall project to iron out these RFI’s in a sensible manner. I am sure that all of this has been considered and thought through and it’s now just a case of making sure communication channels are established.

Have booked in to go on an Officer Training Day with the Corps next month looking at how they clear and maintain the bays as well as some media training.

Child number 2 has arrived safely. Now trying to find non-expensive ways of entertaining the damn thing. (We love him really).

Enjoy the Easter break guys and gals!

McFry

Transpired Solar Wall – what’s that?

It’s a heat absorbing panel placed on the south facing elevations of buildings which creates a warm air pocket.

Great….so what?

The warm air is then ventilated around the building to reduce heating costs. It can be bypassed all together if required during warmer months.

Cool…who’s idea was that?

Obama’s – he freed up a whole bunch of cash to make the world a more energy efficient place and win the hearts of the people.

Nice – but it sounds expensive.

Yes it is…..$3.5M expensive for a trial run at the largest warehouse on the Defence Distribution Centre here in Harrisburg. Initially there were going to be 6 walls covered, which has now dropped to a couple of walls plus a number of ‘options’ if sufficient cash becomes available.

But it will save a whole bunch of cash in the long run right?

Well…..I’m not sure. My first set of questions included:

• What’s the current cost of heating that place?
• What’s the life expectancy of the building itself?
• How long do these panels last and how easy/expensive are they to maintain?
• Do the number of effective years available from the system multiplied by the annual energy savings add up to more than the cost of installation?

And you know what?

What?

Nobody could tell me.

So DO the savings outweigh the expenditure?

That’s what we’re trying to establish. Part of this project is to analyse the energy usage of the building as it is now and compare it to the usage post installation. I suppose if it’s a raving success we’ll be throwing this stuff up everywhere we can…..provided the funding is there ofcourse.

Hmmm – this sounds very Electrical and Mechanic-y.

You’re right – it is, but there’s some structural stuff in there, like making sure the walls are capable of holding the panels and the additional furniture, such as lights and CCTV etc. A large section of the structural integrity of the building itself is provided by the storage racking itself. There is a need to retro-analyse the racking to ensure that additional roof loads do not exceed design limits….but mainly it’s very E&M flavoured.

So what’s McFry doing on it?

Well so far I’m using this as an opportunity to get my head around the project management systems and the ways in which business sis conducted. As the project Engineer I will be doing a lot of contract administration and answering submittals. Those that are out of my area of knowledge I will allocate to someone who can deal with tn and I will ensure all info is turned around in good time. I act as the Clients’ engineer and make sure the contractors are hitting the correct quality standards etc. I will have a CONREP (contractor representative) who has lots of experience from the construction side of life to keep an eye on things too. I will need to get my head into the RMS software package for contract administration and will also have to use DR Checks which are for ensuring that professional types have approved documents where necessary (i.e. that design calcs are checked by an approved individual).

So what’s next?

After a ‘kick off’ meeting today I need the contractor to review his schedule so I can work out any critical time line issues and see how they may affect the contract. It’s complicated by the fact that the ‘body of excellence’ within USACE is in Alabama…….so they have the real technical know-how but we’re the local eyes and ears, so the submittal review process was described in a very vague way. I have been clear that I need to know delineations of responsibility – otherwise things will go Pete Tong. (After a brief discussion about Pete Tong it was agreed that the responsibility will lie here with the local office and that technical advice is called upon as needed.) Either way – before I get my soul dirtied by contract administration, I still need access to computer systems and complete the induction packages……yes the system is still not as it should be! In the meantime – it’s ‘broadening and deepening’ of my knowledge on how things work around here.

Any other news?

I have found that teenagers that normally sit in front of a screen all day and do very little will do exactly the same thing when transported across the sea to America. Also – my colleagues have been getting brave and have tried to emulate the British accent…..now they sound Australian.

Guys,

One of the introductory packages I was given was all about project management within USACE and it reeked of the APMP BoK stuff we did just before we were set free and released into the wild. I have spoken with the guys that run the systems here and they have agreed to release it from the secure part of the USACE intranet, the idea being that it might be useful to see the subject matter in a military construction management setting.

There is a ‘tool kit’ in hard copy that I will arrange to be sent to PEW via the SI to see if it is suitable for wider consumption – most of the language is the same as with APMP. I have also been invited to see their software tools at District office that they use for running these sorts of things which I should be able to scope out either on phase 2 or phase 3, whichever is most appropriate.

I have my first mini-project for the retro-fit of $3,500,000 worth of solar walls to one of the storage facilities here at DDDS. It seems to be another one of those projects where no one is sure who’s doing what. Another birds nest to unravel but it’s early days and shouldn’t be an issue. First meeting is tomorrow.

Essayons!

McFry

28 March 2012

The Mechanicsburg project which is about to run out of cash due to unforeseen ground conditions opened my eyes again today. I asked whether or not it might be possible to get the contractor to agree to allow the Corps of Engineers to resolve the issue. The logic being – there is no budget here to allow contractor to to remove the rock, therefore project will come to a halt and become a big white elephant and contractor will not get the work / money he wanted. I suggested trying to get a ‘training exercise’ for the green skins to do it from one of their training budgets and get their kit dirty for a change, thus allowing the existing money to complete the job and thus the contractor gets a bigger lump of cash and we don’t end up with a big white elephant……..you’d think I just crapped in their swimming pool by the response I got. Enough said. It’s just as barking mad as it is in the UK.