Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Just a quick post today, more on friday is the plan…

Now that Clair Coolers is winding down, Clair Minox Blower B is starting to wind up for off shore execute on 2 Feb. That gives me 19 days to the 12 week gate and while we are mostly there, there is a fair bit of work to get us through. The Minox system uses nitrogen to strip oxygen from sea water for use in re-pressurising wells to increase extraction rates. Removing the oxygen presumably reduces the compressibility of the injected water which protects the plant and pipes used to do so (water hammer?), but I have a little more reading to do on that front. Either way we are upgrading the ‘B’ blower on Clair to increase water injection capacity. 

The project itself is another fixer that has been attempted previously but not completed. To that end the equipment below has been sitting out in the elements (at a cost of £20k a month) rather than in a covered hanger being regularly inspected and turned over. QA issues with the storage company. It is now down for re-conditioning / testing with the manufacturer, the photos below are proof from them that it is actually in a better condition than I first thought. My question to you is, from the information below, what kind of pump is it? It is a blower and it sends nitrogen around a closed system. 

Mark, if you read this, I can send you the photos and GA for one of your pump lessons…

Ironically the office has got a more positive vibe now that our commissioning engineer has been “moved on to Baltimore”.  Since I arrived she has been a source of frustration for both the contractor and us, regularly winding the subbies up by telling them they are incompetent (which is true) but not offering any constructive comments.  This has caused such bad blood that she is number 3 on the Client’s Representative Top Ten List of Things He Hates (the Contractor is not even on this list!).  So after much wrangling the boss has moved her on (which was a mutual decision) before the project goes backwards.  On her leaving we sorted through the stuff she had left and found items dating back to February that were months over due which even the contractor had forgotten about.

Over the last months I have taken it upon my self to try and resolve issues that have been dragging on a while because no one else can get a result (the poisoned chalice).  For my avid followers this has so far amounted to the floor drain  and the faulty pump 17 (more on that later).  Now I have picked up another topic which is Temporary Building Maintenance during construction.  I gathered together the customer reps and we thrashed out the issues concerning maintenance.  Aside from the equipment that is due commissioning there is no record of maintenance on anything else including the fire pumps.  There is also concern that what maintenance there is happening is not good enough especially when water from the boiler has 10x too much iron in it and cooling towers have excessive bacterial growth.  I took the time to review Operation and Maintenance Manuals for all the big items (boilers, chillers, cooling towers etc) and then tried to check what the non commissioning items only to discover that the submission for theses items has never been sent to us.  Armed with some good facts and examples I had a meeting with the contractor who was very receptive (they like dealing with Army guys more) who admitted the document was missing and that they could improve by changing procedures and including more details.  As I suspected there was no way they were not doing the maintenance but they were not always including the details because this document had not been written to tie it all in.  So months of whinging  dealt with in a 2 hour meeting.  I have now got to go through the building equipment list and identify every item that needs maintenance. Should take me 6 weeks!  We also have over 2000 QA issues to address.  So many of these are legacy from guys who have left the project that they are just sitting there with no one taking ownership.  I will be sorting them out next week and apportioning responsibility where necessary.  Some of these are over 2 years old and have been dealt with but are still not signed off.

I also visited the steam generation plant on site to see how it compared to our boiler setup.  This is pretty big facility providing steam for all other buildings on site.  Our interest comes form the fact that the plant has a continuous analysis system that checks the water quality constantly and can notify the engineer by phone or wifi if an issue occurs that the machine cannot sort or even order more chemicals.  The equipment is all provided free by the vendor (although the installation isn’t) who set this up and enhance boiler lifetime considerably. 

Above.  Where the magic happens

Below. One of four big boilers

Our current boiler system relies on little old men taking readings every hour for 8 hours, chucking in a coffee can of chemicals when ever he thinks things are out of kilter.  This seems very old fashioned and imprecise and the water test result imply it doesn’t work.  However this is what the customer wants! I will have to change their minds.

Pump 17 continues to delay the commissioning of the cooling system so I used this as the basis for my TMR to try and get resolution.  As mentioned previously the pumps are too big and need better control through VFDs but without analysing the situation it is difficult to get any support.  It turns out the motors are nearly 200% oversize even including the need for expansion.  We have referred the matter back to the design team in Baltimore because the designer is not conceding on this.  Interestingly the Design firm recently acquired the firm that employs all our QA guys…….We still have no answer on whether fire dampers should be tested with the system running.  We have gone to the engineer at Ft Dettrick to find out what they did and why.  Rain last Friday managed to flood the sump with the fuel return tank in it.  This is inside the generator building and is meant to be dry so it was a bit of a shock to see the watering pouring in through the pipe line from the flooded sump in the fuel storage area.  Even more of a shock for the King Snake stuck down there!  It turns out a bung to block this pipe had been left off because no one thought the other sump would flood but it did because the lid was badly fitted.  QA issue 2001…..

In Harrisburg the fun and games continue.  The Contractor still has no idea how the steel beams are going to be moved on the roof.  The most recent idea has been to cut all the beams in to 3 pieces so that they can fit on the quad bike trailer.  This will cost them even more money and slow down the job even more.  On that note we have still not received an updated schedule due 1 July.  Office engineering are drafting a letter saying that as no schedule has been received it is obvious that the contractor considers the project is running on time so there will be no come back if the project runs over time.  This might get there attention especially as they are running 9 months late.  That said even after a directed letter was sent, telling them to employ a new Safety and Health Officer in 2 weeks, it has been stiffly ignored for 6 weeks.  When challenged the response was that they were having trouble hiring someone.  It turns out that they were trying to poach the SHO off the HQ project next door but he would rather eat his own hands than work for these clowns! The High Bay Drain Fiasco continues.  There are actually serious discussions as to whether there is a need for the over flows especially as we had 9 inches fall last Friday and there were no problems.

The HQ building is coming on well and they are starting to pour the floors.  I enclose a photo of this possible project for my successors (C and E&M).

The steel will all be up by next May but there will be plenty going on especially as that is when the Mechanical equipment will start going in. 

And in other news….

It is a bad time to be depressed in DC with a shooting and self immolation not to mention furloughs.  The furloughs did not impact us because our funds come from last years budget but we had guys from the district drafted in to keep them employed on our budget. 

The Orioles finished 3rd in the League so did not qualify for the wild card place in the finals, the Ravens have had a pretty ropey season winning 3 and losing 3 with not much hope of another Super Bowl this year but the State College Terrapins (Terps) Football team is doing well with 4 wins and one spanking by Florida State 63-0.  This equals the biggest loss in the history of the college competition but that is what happens when your quarterbacks are all injured in the game.

Halloween is rapidly approaching and the amount people spend over here is staggering.  They really go to town and where we are is so popular for trick or treating, people bus in from around the county.  We have bough 4kg of stickys already but we have been warned that might not be enough!

We also took part in another great US tradition of going to visit a time share at an outdoor pursuit centre.  These places are very well set up for doing nearly everything both winter and summer so we were nearly tempted to stump up $10,000 for 2 weeks a year for life (transferable to resorts all round the world). However when we declined and they asked if $5,000 was OK we decided that was too necky and collected our voucher for a free 3 day holiday and left.

Warrick also found a car for me.

I am exceptionally pleased that I only have 6 weeks left on site, the last 3 weeks have proved to be incredibly frustrating for me and keeping my opinions to myself is proving difficult.  Those of you that I have talked to in person will be aware of how annoyed I have been at various points during my attachment but here are some of the highlights from the recent past:

• Yesterday I witnessed an incident with 2 of the tower cranes which could only have been described as dangerous.  On bringing it to the attention of the project managers I was told to go and get the sub contractor to fill out the near miss report and after some discussion instruct them to remove the crane driver at fault; a message I duly delivered.  This decision was reversed by the PMs after shortly thereafter, doing nothing for the company credibility nor mine.
• Last week I have having serious issues with the council highways dept and couldn’t get the desired answer back, so I asked the PM for his help in dealing with it, request ignored, Monday morning we receive instructions from an irate highways supervisor to return the road closure to 2 way traffic immediately 4 days earlier than planned, at the point at which they looked for someone to blame, I walked out.
• I chair the sub-contractors coord meeting on a weekly basis, which means I receive the sub-cons concerns and plans for the next week do my best to deconflict at the meeting and take the points that can’t be fixed then and there to people who can work on them in slow time.  Often I have requests for more storage space on site, which doesn’t really exist but that is a story for another time, AER 3 probably.  There had been some safety concerns raised over the over head working where we have formwork being struck above mast climbers or people working below, there was a suggestion of a daily briefing that would deconflict space and time for overhead activities.  I included in the minutes and put it to the PMs who seemed underwhelmed and at that time more interested in patresses (a subject which has dominated conversation over the last 2 weeks at the highest level of the project) nobody else seemed that bothered, I tried again, ignored again.  Last Thursday we had a RIDDOR reportable accident when some plywood being struck from a slab fell on a cladder in a mast climber and broke his shoulder blade, suddenly interest appeared in deconflicting people woking overhead.

A complete whinge today, sorry, but my only real sounding board on site was an agency site manager who they’ve got rid of in order to bring in their own websters blokes. 

As previously mentioned I have been supervising bringing the utilities onto site, so far it has gone fairly well I had to decide to abort the BT ducting as there simply wasn’t going to be enough space for the work to go on, this will be revisited in the future as the disruption will only impact on site activities rather than the public. I had to deal with a complaint from the Southern BBC Engineering and Operations Manager which was quite an uncomfortable phonecall, it felt a little like OPTAG where the SIMPRESS are sticking a camera in your face and trying to trip you up with questions.

The geothermal element of the installation is quite interesting, what I didn’t realise is that the Southampton geothermal borehole is the only functioning one in the UK. The original project was started as part of a Dept of Energy experiment in the late 70s, the DoE decided that it wasn’t a viable option but Southampton City Council decided to pursue it and went into partnership with private enterprise and started the Southampton Geothermal Heating Company, there are some other complex company arrangements that involve Cofely GDF Suez that I still don’t truly understand but it’s just minor details. Because the City Council are still involved in the scheme it seems that connection to the scheme is often a planning condition, bribery by another name.

Anyway the scheme works something along these lines (see Rich aged 5 sketch).

The borehole is 1700m deep and taps into a geothermal aquifer containing ‘ancient’ brine at 76 degrees Celsius (the bit I can’t quite get is why it needs to be ancient and if it is it must take a while to recharge) a pump at 600m deep draws the water to the surface it arrives at about 70 ish degrees. At this point it goes through a heat exchanger to with fresh water and the cooler brine is discharged into Southampton Water. The fresh water temperature is now topped up to 80 degrees using some combination of Combined Heating and Power plants (CHPs) conventional boilers and biomass boilers. Once the desired temperature is reached it is them pumped around the distribution network that runs under Southampton. In key buildings such as the Civic Centre there are additional boilers that maintain the temperature of the network.

A building that is using the system has a flow and return pipe plumbed into a metering rig. Crucially the metering rig allows the provider to measure energy used, by monitoring temp in, flow through and temp out the clever computer works out how many MWh of energy have been used, I guess this has something to do with specific heat capacity and other such stuff that GCSE physics mentioned. The demand is controlled by the BMS which decides to raise or lower flow as required. There is a limit on the return temp and the contract specifically states that it must be around the 55 degree mark.

The flow pipe can flow in both directions (not simultaneously for the confused Civils amongst us, I stopped short of asking the stupid question of how that works, instead choosing to nod sagely) depending on demand. So if a sudden demand occurs near the civic centre CHP and pump it will be fed from there and the CHPs and pumps are the other extremes of the network pump water inwards to fill the ‘gap’.

Once inside the building I think ( though need to check) I think it goes through a big heat exchanger in the plant room which pumps it around what I suppose could be described as a ring main and then on everything third floor smaller heat exchangers steal heat away for the DHW and heating systems.

All the connection has been made onto a live system in what they refer to as a ‘hot tap’ the provider have been banging on about it for weeks now and made it sound really exciting. It wasn’t, just a couple of blokes all the way from Scunthorpe with a drill, no steam, no blowback nothing.

What a big shaft.  Note all the services running through the same small area of road way, at least half of the ones seen behind the guying drilling shouldn’t have been there.

M’s I prepare for the questions I can’t answer.

Mark, in all seriousness if you’re excited by this they’d be more than happy to have you come and look at all the engines and other stuff that moves.

Well, not quite.

When presented to the Technical Authorities, one of them noticed that on the valve plate it stipulates a maximum design temperature of 90 DegC, not ideal on a line that can see 175 DegC. This was missed at every step along the way and set our meeting off to a bad start. Luckily Woodgroup were able to offer up a ringer that was suitable for service up to and beyond 175 DegC. However this new valve had had the valve stem changed out, but there were no certificates to QA the material used. As a work around I got agreement that the valve could be fitted for leak testing, thus allowing MC1 on 28 Sept, but to be used in hydrocarbon service it would need to Positive Material Identification (PMI). PMI would have required for a trained person to be mobilised with the equipment (think speed gun), so I gave the Asset a choice, PMI the in place valve or we fly out a ringer with certs complete. They went for the second option and so this valve is now fitted and I am left with the glamorous business of ensuring the deviation is recorded in the change management system – queue much chasing after people, bullying and coercion.

If you are interested, here is what the most expensive valve in the world (gram for gram) looks like…

The real drama didn’t start until close of play last week and luckily I’ve not had to get too involved. On Thursday the ACE Engineer responsible for developing the commissioning plan highlighted the fact that the test pressure stated on the piping isometrics was some 30 bar lower than that required by the piping specifications. Following some calculations by BP it appeared that the incorrect temperature factor had been applied to the design pressure to calculate the test pressure (1.5 instead of 1.75) resulting in this discrepancy.  This quickly blew up into quite a large issue between BP and WGPSN, with WGPSN spending the weekend checking all of the pipe work in the Coolers project, then all of the pipework in the Clair TAR and then all of the Pipework in the Magnus TAR. A considerable expenditure on Wood Groups part to ensure that, while the pipe work did indeed fall short of the required standard, it was more than suitable for service. Part of the issue lies in the way that BP specifies pipework on assets which is flawed in that it is a massive over estimation in most cases. Ultimately the situation has been justified and there will be no requirement to replace the pipework, which is a massive relief, and the hullabaloo that it caused nicely distracted everyone from the valve issue and I have managed to get it sorted in the back ground.

In hindsight, I should have spent more time when the valve issue was flagged up restraining WGPSN to ensure that we had the right solution. I allowed us to go forward and present a completely inappropriate valve to the TAs and it was only luck that we had a second, more suitable, option to present to them. I am now in the process of trying to implement these tactics to the new issue, Independent verification. 

OSCR Regulation 19 mandates that IVB is carried out as a check calc for the project to ensure that disasters like Piper Alpha and Deepwater Horizon don’t happen in the North Sea. There are 20 days until the system is due to go live and I just got handed 23 pages of comments that require response from WGPSN. The clock is ticking once again.

In the background I have also re-written the project Approval For Expenditure to make sure that I don’t run over budget. I like the philosophy of moving the goal posts and in this case it was agreed. My request was for a cool million and it should be approved shortly, unfortunately they BP won’t be giving me the 10% commission I requested.

All in all, good stuff for CPR methinks. 

It has been a few weeks since my last post and lot of has happened since. The bridge deck has been poured on the 22nd on possible the worst day. No rain, still, but it was well over 30deg and the wind was right on the limit for operating a boom pump. The wind on the deck which is 9m high gave us curing issues as the surface started to dry and crack very quickly. As part of the pour plan I had worked out roughly what the rate of evaporation would be in accordance with the spec and with the wind gusting over 60km/h we had to constantly apply alcohol in a fine spray as soon as a portion of deck had been screeded. A bit of woeful mismanagement by the supervisor meant that we didn’t have hessian, plastic sheeting and the water hose ready to start curing the deck as soon as we should have and by the time we got it all covered there was a lot of cracking on the initially poured section. We have moved swiftly since as we stripped the scaffold on both sides over the next few days so we could start the backfill to the first Abutment RW levels. As a result we havn’t been up on the deck for the last couple of weeks so I have yet to see how bad the crazy paving effect may be. We backfilled both sides by 1.35m and poured the four base slabs for the first RW’s swiftly followed by the stem walls the week after and this week we have started the next stage of backfill for the next RW which will take us  under 2m below the top of deck. I should have insisted on wet curing for the lower RW’s as all four bases had a fair amount of surface cracking on yet another windy day which means I didn’t learn my lesson the first time but more truthfully means I just couldn’t give the pour the required time or more accurately the planning time it required relying more on the subcontractor to do the right thing. I have found this has been the case on a number of occasions, when I was purely a site engineer at the start of the attchment I had the time to comprehensively plan a concrete pour and direct it but with multiple sites and a crippling amount of paperwork to produce I have to rely more on the supervisor and the subcontractor. It has often reminded me of what Richard and John would say regarding knowledge of those you work with and to never assume they know what they are doing. I have frequently been surprised at how little knowledge of concrete the FRP company demonstrates who now frequently ask me what or how they should do something which 7 months ago would have been laughable. My supervisor is similar but tends to know what he should do but hasn’t a clue why – I felt exactly the same in JM lectures except I didn’t even know what I should do!

  Abutment A wingwall shutters

  Deck pour

  Retaining Wall bases 1B & 4B

        Backfill to next RW’s on abutment A

The aim is to open the bridge before xmas which is achievable as per the programme rewrite the other month but means I have practically zero tolerance for inclement weather or unforeseen problems. Having really pushed the subcontractor over the past few weeks we are a few days ahead in the programme but the critical piece will be the next backfill stage this week. We have a public holiday coming up which means no trades on site this weekend or mon, tue next week so we need to finish the next stage by this fri. This has already been compromised as the general superintendent ordered all machines to stop and knock off for the day over concerns of the dust levels which has meant we have lost a half day. The rail systems continue to be installed and all track has now been laid. The earthworks on the northern approach are now complete and the southern approach is probably only a week away from getting up to level. All this activity has meant it has been very difficult to build a bridge, it is almost likely other teams view the bridge as a hindrance and not the actual reason they are working in the area in the first place. The earthworks team seem to think they are special – which they are but not in the way they think! We did have a crossing point for plant over the tracks which got ripped out yesterday without any communication whatsoever which means to get from one abutment to another we now have to drive round onto the public road over Eastwood bridge and through the opposite gate which is a slight embuggerance. The sooner we get the backfill up to level and are able to traffic the bridge the better.

I still have responsibility for the eight other bridges along the alignment but as I have no more resources this has been mainly confined to administrative work regarding NCR’s and RFI’s. We have completed the substation work with the exception of two LV pits along an access road. Conduit issues still continue although the issues at Scalabrini and Kemps Creek have been resolved. I managed to cut the conduits cleanly enough for the HV cables to be pulled through today. The problem had been the limited space (40-70mm gap) to get any cutting equipment as deep as 700mm to cut the lower conduits. In the end we encased the conduits in mortar and got a concrete cutting subcontractor to come in to wire saw flush to each walkway slab face. This was fine for one side but when trying to cut the other side only 70mm away the wire saw tended to find its way back to the original cut so we ended up using 50mm core drill to stitch cut the other side which made a little messier but we were able to tidy up any buring and sharp edges to the clients satisfaction. Cowpasture Rd viaduct has now experienced the same issue as when an attempt to pull the cables through was made an obstruction was found. CCTV cameras showed some form of blockage so we a subcontractor has been employed to break out the conduits in the walkway to investigate. Having done this with the top conduits we haven’t found any blockage so far – could be a waste of money!

 Cowpasture Rd viaduct Combined Services Route (CSR) walkway

Having spoken with John Reddie last week and again today I think we are close to finally confirming my design attachment with SMEC. SMEC have designed all the bridge structures on this project and I am hopefully heading to the bridge design team but SKM is a back up company which could be an option.

In other news, our little man managed to take 3 unaided steps last week which I managed to witness having come back from work an hour earlier than normal. He has done bugger all since so I don’t think he is in a rush to walk and quite frankly he can take his time as its hard enough keeping track of him in quadrupedal mode. My wife organised a group 1 year old birthday party for her baby group at the weekend on the park at Coogee beach which was great fun with about 60 people turning up unfortunately I had to take Ethan and myself home early after he projectile vomited over me 3 times for good measure – it was not a good look! Also finally got caught speeding the other week having missed my usual turning on the motorway (half asleep) I failed to see a cop car parked behind a forest as you do who clocked me at 90km/h in a 70km/h in the middle of nowhere on a straight road. He took pity on me fortunately as I explained I was a tourist in an unfamiliar area which took the fine down from $450 to $250 which is still scandalous, he looked genuinely disappointed when he realised I had a UK license and so he wouldn’t be able to award me any points. Having been here for 7 months and only just been caught speeding considering that is the only offence the NSW police enforce is not too bad but maybe they should focus on reducing the amount of shootings that go on here.

At last some progress is being made although it is not always a smooth ride.  We have had some commissioning inspections take place with some passes and some fails.  A big issue has been the boilers.  We have 4 boilers which run on natural gas and diesel.  For the Functional Performance Test in the commissioning process the spec states that only 1 boiler needs to be tested on one fuel type.  The Contractor decided to use the only boiler that has been used consistently (more on that later) which was the best of the four and promptly failed the test for NOx emissions. As a result there is now a big concern about the state of the less used boilers especially if the contractor only needs to get this boiler improved to run the test again.  Back in July a water sample from the boilers showed excessive iron and bacterial growth in the boiler system which indicated that the cleaning and maintenance of the boiler was not up to scratch.  Despite raising this with the Contractor nothing has changed so I have been tasked with checking the monthly maintenance logs for the building, to work out what else is not being maintained correctly.  The big concern is that damage is done to big line items (boilers, chillers etc) that will make any warranties on equipment void and will cost a lot of money to put right especially if the service contractors, who will maintain the building, discover this.  This has been a huge task made harder by the fact that our hard copies are not in the correct place and the downloadable documents take 20mins to come through and can fail at the last minute.  Have looked at the spec the contractor has failed submit a key document on how Temporary Operation and Maintenance is going to be carried out for the building.  Instead the focus has been on the temporary conditioning maintenance need to pass commissioning (and that has been dubious so far) and not much else.  This week I called a meeting with the future owners to hear their concerns and draw up an action plan to get the concerns addressed.  Concerns included the use of pre printed check sheets which only the date changed on, poor record of future maintenance plans and a general lack of information which the client has been asking for. 

This week we received the test results back for chiller motor testing.  It confirmed that pump 17 has a fault because the in rush current is high even when the load is uncoupled.  However the report stated that the issue could be due to valve settings! I emailed to ask how this conclusion could be reached but the independent tester refused to comment.  However both the Corps and Contractor agree that the motor is faulty and needs replacing.  This does not solve the problem for the system however.  The bigger picture is that the pumps are too big for the system and are not running efficiently.  The pumps send the chiller water to the cooling towers on the roof.  The pumps all feed in to a header and are balanced by butterfly valves.  Simple enough except the motors are too powerful (4x 200hp) and so the valves are set at 25% or the roof floods when the cooling towers over flow.  The motors are also expensive premium efficiency motors which are not able to perform efficiently if the valves are only 25% open  and the power being throttled is going to damage the butterfly valves to the point that they will not be able to completely seal the pipework for maintenance.  The designer insists this is as planned but we are all asking if a Variable Frequency Drive can be installed (at a fair cost) so that the pumps can be controlled and allowed to soft start.  Another option is to cut down the impeller size in the pumps.  This is next weeks battle.

My leaky floor drain has finally been replaced.  It was found that there was a fracture in the drain which was allowing water through so a replacement was necessary.   However we have also requested that a pan directing water away from the server in the room below should the drain leak again, be installed as an extra safety measure.  This was met with a bit of resistance because the drain is now mended.  However after a bit of encouragement I have got the agreement to install one after the Corps has been trying for a year.  It helps that the Contractor QC head is an old Navy Construction Brigade RSM (think Navy sapper) who dislikes my civilian counterparts and will only deal with me and my US Army counter part on now on tricky issues. 

The final issue this week has been dynamic fire dampers in the air handling system.  This are spring loaded dampers that activate when the fusible link holding them open melts.  Commissioning requires that these be tested with the air handlers running but the manufacturer advises against this (the air flow may break a closed damper designed to activate when the air handler should have been shut down) as does the designer who thinks that despite the installed pressure relief valves in the system the pressure changes may end up pulling down ceilings.  However the spec states that the air handlers must be running but no one can say why.  We suspect it is to check that the system will cope in case a link fails prematurely but no one as yet can confirm this.  The test is on hold.

Yesterday we had a departmental breakfast at Denny’s (the national greasy spoon chain) which was a really good way of seeing everyone out of work and doing a bit of bonding.  It was scary to see how much my co workers actually eat – even the smallest guy ate double what I did and I was filled to capacity!

In Harrisburg it has been very productive.  The roof replacement is going well and a surprise test of the recovery procedure for someone activating the fall arrest system worked well.  We have also identified a cherry picker that the contractor can use to install the over flow drains in the 80ft high Bay Area.  These can go through a 35″ door at 123ft but cannot be rented so at $200,000 a pop it will be a big expenditure for our struggling contractor.  The QA guys have also noted “inaccurate” claims for materials.  A claim for $150,000 of electrical kit was submitted but on inspection there was only $20,000 of kit found.  The project engineer let this one go because relations are better but is keeping an eye out for future claims. The customer has also asked that all conduit for fire detection systems be painted red in accordance with site standing orders, not mentioned until most of the electrical conduit had been installed!  Fun and games…

And in other news…..

The Navy Yard shooting sent a bit of a shockwave through the sites because it was so close to home.  A guy I flew over with was in the compound that day but was in the adjacent building and managed to get away unscathed.  There is also another chance for sequestration because the Government here has yet to approve the new budget for the next financial year which starts October 1st.  This will affect all non essential civil servants which amounts to most of my office.  Could be quiet Tuesday. The Raven’s Game was a fantastic experience.  It was one of the best sporting experiences I have ever had as the show is not just about the sport.  With Cheerleaders, bands and fireworks they sure know how to throw a good party and football is actually a very exciting sport now that i understand the rules! Fall has started so we are making plans to head to NYC in before it gets crazy expensive for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  So much to do and so little time.

MC 1 is now predicted for some point tomorrow. Luckily it isn’t just the Coolers project holding this up, but we are probably the higher profile due to the nature of the issue. We are much closer to having a valve in place, but as ever the last few steps are the hardest.

Option 1 :  At about 8 this morning I was informed that the valve would have had a serial number heat printed onto the body. This would allow the identification of the specific valve so the Mill certs could be acquired.  A body was duly despatched to sand of the paint from the valve body to discover this magic serial number.

This is what was found:

If it wasn’t for first hand knowledge of the searches that take place when you fly off-shore I would be convinced that somebody out there had been smoking crack. Un-tagged valve my arse. One of the issue with having a couple of hundred miles of water between the site and site office is that you can’t guarantee that the right idiot is giving you the right information. Having that photo would have saved about half a day of effort.

The deviation request is due to be release to me imminently although the review team (Engineering Tech Authorities) that I have had queued up all day have pretty much all gone home. It turns out that even civvies can have REMFs. So another unnecessary 12 hour delay to this solution, but this time I have all of the pieces and I have the chessboard, so long as I can steer the issue through the TA’s then the ball is well and truly rolling.

Option 2: The original list of 50 valves has been whittled down to 6 of which one is a ringer, but for the fact that it has the same requirement for a deviation and so the hoop remains. 

Option 3: Buying a new one, this one was never really viable due to the lead time. 

Option 4: The possibility of blanking of the valve location was looked at, but as this valve is the entry point for the system leak test, it is not an option. The possibility of finding a similar valve elsewhere on the asset that could be cross decked is being investigated, but I really don’t see that one flying at this point. It would still require a significant amount of paperwork to organise so Option 1 is still looking good.

Point of interest…

Since the coolers project is on the radar some bright spark decided to set the cat amongst the pigeons by pointing out that the pipes were only tested to 199 bar vs. the piping spec of 230 bar. This has set minds racing across the TAR and Asset teams although the explanation is quite simple. The new piping is specified for 230 bar by fabrication but it is only tested to 1.5X design pressure. It doesn’t really make any sense to test to specification as this would be tantamount to testing to destruction as far as I can see. I am awaiting a comment from the piping engineers to confirm my view before answering the growing panic, but at this point it is the last thing needed.

Just thought I would pop you all a quick post in the heat of the moment…

We’ve been slowly grinding through the the last 10% of the project execution and progress has been okay. The focus is firmly on achieving mechanical completion 1 (MC1) so things like re-instating junction boxes, modifying lighting and connecting instruments is a little in the back seat. Pretty much the last piece of the mechanical puzzle was one valve, HV331077, a 3/4″ ball valve rated at 250 bar. Fitting it would effectively seal the system ready for testing and commissioning.

It is missing…

As of yesterday morning I was informed that it wasn’t off shore, so while WGPSN raised the Engineering query I did a little digging.

It was on the Destruct P&ID as part of the destruct scope…

It was on the destruct ISO and not identified for retention and re-use…

It is on the construction ISO…

And here’s the little bugger on the construct P&ID, the finished product…

However, we haven’t bought a new one as you can see in this BOM (the pressure class of our valve is 1500):

Because someone thought we were keeping the old one and re-using it as per this construction valve schedule:

So what happened?

A lot of attention was paid to the removal and construction of the big heavy coolers, the pipework and all of the supporting steel. All of the big and expensive items were analysed, as they should, to ensure they would operate safely and that they were moved around deck safely. However no-one thought to write a destruct valve schedule, check off the valves for re-conditioning and re-use as and when the lines were destructed. No one thought to check the construct valve schedule against the destruct ISOs and do a sense check. Bottom line is, WGPSN have cocked up and now we are chasing a very real deadline. 

Several hours later…

Resolutions

I’ve spent much of the day chasing down options with the WGPSN JRE, Stewart Russell. He was away yesterday and making any kind of progress was like wading through treacle. Everyone I spoke to just seemed to want to stick their heed in the sand and believe that the easiest options would work out. In the end they kind of are, but there is a lot of work required to get them across the finish line. This has been an excellent opportunity to see how the SPA / JRE relationship is supposed to work and I have spent most of the day coordinating BP and placating the TAR team while Stewart has been chivvying WGPSN along to produce their deliverables.

So…

Option 1: We have an untagged valve of mostly the same specification off-shore that is not required for any other i.e. buckshee. The problem is that the valve stem is rolled and not forged which means a deviation is required to get it authorised for service. On top of that, for the deviation to comply with BP technical practices it must be supplied with certification of the mills fabrication techniques to provide QA. However as the valve is untagged it has taken a while to track down the correct certification and this won’t be complete until morning. I have agreement in principle from the BP mechanical TA that this deviation will fly, especially as it is a deviation that has been accepted before as the standard fabrication technique is to roll and not to forge valve stems. Trust BP to do it the hard way. I am confident that with this approach we can have the valve in place by CoP tomorrow.

Option 2: I identified 48 valves currently held in the BP inventory that possibly fit the bill and WGPSN has narrowed this down to 19 hopefuls. By the morning we may actually have a winner, but there is no guarantee that we could get it to Clair before Option 1 could bear fruit. In support of this option would be the fleet of EC225 Superpuma sitting on the airfield at the moment…

Option 3: Buy a new valve of the correct spec. Ironically this is not really an option due to the lead time.

We also considered blanking of the flange where the valve should sit as this valve is a dead leg on the system. However the valve is probably there for a reason and I am waiting to hear back from ops whether this would be a viable solution. And anyway I would still have to do a bunch of paperwork to get a modification like that passed.

So, as it stands the mechanical window which was due to close in about 53 minutes is wide open and my (Projects and Mods) arse is hanging well and truly out of it. Lets see what we can get done tomorrow!

Progress on site has been fairly significant this week. We have finally completed the Ground Floor! Aside from now being well and truly above ground level, which is excellent for morale, it also means that I no longer have to walk up and down a multitude of steps to access the decks (I have seen my weight increase to my normal fighting weight, so it is either the lack of steps at work, Nicky is baking more, the stress levels have decreased, or a combination of all 3).

The addition of a Project Manager to the South Block team has been a big injection of capacity. The fact that he has come from Leightons, JHG’s parent company may suggest that ‘Mother’ is beginning to take interest in her wayward child, and is reinforcing the project to ensure the success of her investment.

The PM has immediately made an impact at the subbie contractual level. Crown (Concreter) is a notoriously difficult subcontractor to deal with and have point blank refused to pour concrete some days stating that they do not have the manpower. As the concrete pours dates are promulgated daily for 2 days in advance I don’t see this as a valid excuse. It continues to happen though, until after a frustrating day for supervisors and engineers trying to coax Crown to pour some columns that would enable WCF (Formworker) to continue work the following day (Crown and WCF do not get along well), the PM waded in. I’m not entirely sure what he said or promised (I know pizzas were ordered) but not only did they pour the 3 columns we required, they also worked late to 8pm and poured every single column that we had formed, they even brought in an additional mobile pump to get the job done! This was a big win for us as it opened up several additional work fronts and released column forms to prepare for the 1^st floor.

A similar issue arose the following day, but this time it was resolved by the issuing of a site instruction to the concreter to pour the upper basement to ground floor ramp regardless of weather conditions. Though the issuing of a site instruction appears to be a caving in to their contractual obligation to pour concrete in all conditions, the site instruction will now be debated at commercial level to decide whether it gets paid or not – I suspect not. Crown’s argument was that the weather (light rain) would not produce the specified finish, correct; but does not alleviate them from poor concrete placement. The contract states “The concrete placement subcontractor is responsible for the finish of the concrete in all conditions, including rain,” and also that the “Concrete subcontractor is obligated to pour concrete regardless of the weather, except in heavy rain,” The latter is a little vague as ‘heavy’ is not quantified but from my objective opinion, and from brief discussion with Richard Farmer back at the Mother-ship, JHG should have no mercy for the subbie in regards to rain – it’s worse in the UK!

In the foreground the drips from the slab above have ruined the surface texture. The remainder of the slab has the (now standard on NCH) golfball effect. You can also see the water runs and to a lesser extent the surface undulations above the grade change.

Core C was my second pour on the job, way back in March, and though all appeared to go well on the day, it was an unmitigated disaster inside the core walls. To add some perspective to this and to put up my own responsibility umbrella, I was handed responsibility of the pour 30minutes before it was due to start. The reinforcement was already installed and checked, the shutters were closed, and the concrete was on the road. The issue was in my opinion one of design. The walls were 400mm thick and heavily reinforced, especially around the header-beams and jack pockets. In some places it was later found that the concrete physically couldn’t get past the reinforcement to the form below creating voids and exposed reinforcement in almost every cell of the core. The structure has now undergone an extensive survey using a mixture of cored samples and scanning costing in excess of $120,000. The rectification work is yet to be completed but will certainly involve the breaking out of large sections of wall (1m squares) to be re-poured.

One of the less significant defects in Core C. This reinforcement has 30mm cover to the surface but due to poor vibration and closely spaced bars, concrete couldn’t get through.

The remediation work has the added issue that it has held up progress on the South floors and subsequent floors that tie into the core will require additional back propping to prevent additional load being transferred to the walls. The JHG solution to the Core C problem was to draft in an engineer with the sole responsibility for ensuring that it didn’t happen again. The next lift of Core C was poured last week, and even with all the additional resources and quality ensuring measures in place, there are still several areas of exposed reinforcement. I think this issue could have been engineered out at the design phase as it should have been fairly clear that the shear volume of steel in the wall was going to make concrete placement difficult. Provision could have been made for either an increased wall thickness or a more sympathetic arrangement of bars in areas of high reinforcement. The concrete is already at a high slump and using a 14mm aggregate to ensure it has the best balance between consistence and strength. This problem will continue for the following lifts unless a preventative solution can be found to minimise the poor flow of concrete around the steel.

I have got myself involved in the procurement package for the concrete precast panel walls. It is a relatively small package at $700,000 but has given me the opportunity to follow the process from initial tender to where it is currently stalled in the commercial department. I was a site representative at the initial interviews with the supplier and the installer and am looking to maintain involvement throughout the process until the phase ends in early December. Time is flying by.

In other project news, and I suppose related to the arrival of a few Leighton managers, is the recent Leighton’s audit of the project that was, I assume, somewhat scathing as it has had the effect or removing the Commercial Director of the project and the General Manager for the Western Australia Region has ‘resigned’. This has also induced a further 2 senior commercial administrators to resign.

Thanks to Mike/Richard for the blog on the shearing of bolts on Reinforcement connectors. I spotted the connectors whilst wandering site and ‘reminded’ them that the heads were supposed to shear off. Luckily they were designed to shear; I had to check when i got back to the office.

ANCON MBT Couplers. This connection was intended to allow the column starters to be replaced at a later date (after the bulk haulage road was finished with). A change in plan meant that it was no longer necessary to do this but we had already gone too far.

In other news, Nicky and I have finally booked a holiday to NZ to do the classic campervan tour of the South Island, and hopefully meet up with my cousin from Wellington. We are also doing the largest swing in the world (nothing dodgy) that we saw on the Australian TV show “The biggest loser,” If it can hold the fatties, I’m sure it will be OK for us! We are off to Sydney to catch up with the Bainger’s and take part in the Tough Mudder event.