Materials Man

The post title is a book title by Joe Moran, not finished it yet but can still recommend it to you folk interested in our roads’ history. This author is not dilatory when it comes to detail, it is crammed with it. I did have to point out through his blog spot that a central reservation is a central reserve, mere pedantry I know but how often can you correct a University lecturer?

Hope he doesn’t read this as I will no doubt have made several grammatical errors.

I had a meeting today with a newish testing lab in Scotland. CET Safehouse have arrived in the small marketplace in Scotland, and  have a tool that the others do not have, Internet reporting.  An evolved system, some five years in the making, not only does it act as a an electronic booking in system but it also has the worksheets and the report sheets integral to the whole system. In CET safehouse’s system they transfer into your inbox your checked and authorised results, this means you can pick up your results as fast as they produce them. UKAS still seem to rely on your final reporting function as the paper “certificate” being produced and checked and signed.

Wake up to the electronic era UKAS!

And one day after the announcement,  Soil Mechanics have acquired from Bureau Veritas (BV) the whole of their testing labs.

Saynors to Weeks to BV to soil mechanics, a lot of  “us”  have history in those links.

And on the back of the award for the A96 project, Morrison Construction will have their own UKAS site based laboratory.

I did deliver my pavement design talk to my senior colleagues on two separate occasions this week. Fortunately my stumbling performance was politely received, my highland hosts have an imbued politeness, which contrasts with my part weggie assertiveness. (Pure dead aggression, bye the way, know what I mean?)

To the talk, my spreadsheet brings together everything I put in text, and highlights, “where’s the money”. I have set it at 80 MSA  as that would appear to be the “design” standard adopted by Transport Scotland for most trunk roads. Perhaps so, if you have the money, order the best you can.

As I mentioned before class 4 designs are far too expensive, this cost comes from the foundation, the class 4 pavement is the cheapest as it is the thinnest. So I’m not sure where the highways agency thinks a class 4 foundation will be used, perhaps I need to run a few more designs with different foundation CBRs.  All blacktop surfaced foundations are more expensive than hydraulically bound materials at 80 MSA. this should worry the blacktop boys as even the very good EME2 material does not feature as a base. I also believe I can reduce my HBM prices as I have induced cracks in  HBM foundations when I now believe I was being conservative.

Other features that emerged were discussions on what needs cracked, it seems clear that mixes with 10 N/mm2 at 7 days, laid widths more than 4.75m and all HBM bases with a blacktop surface, need induced cracking. the other item was laying tolerances, it is clear that series 700 is not up to speed with the new requirements. No negative tolerances are a particular problem and need careful thought and discussion at tender time and when subsequently placing a sub-contract. Do both pre-tender?

A adjunct to pavement design was raised by me, Transport Scotland have road compliance testing at years 3, 4 and 5, this includes the deflectograph. If this shows potential defects, then investigation follows. If your pavement suffers from debonding, it probably will show as a potential defect. It is vital therefore, to “prove” your design was built to the DMRB, to record your bond coat applications, with all the attendant spraybar and product certificates. This will be necessary till a bond test is introduced. Also have the lab that cores the pavement from the upper layers to record and photograph the whole core before any splitting is performed.

I did a talk to our graduates recently on pavement design with a construction director, I did the technical bit he did the money / risks bit. Directors don’t get to be directors in a LTD company without merit. For those of you mentally compiling a list of  directors without merit,  just ask yourself if they were good for the company, ie made money? So there are certain learning opportunities watching a director who has had training and experience that I will never have. It was a complete focus on “where’s the money?” ” and how can you lose it?” A money risk workshop.

Although I am never oblivious to money, it  can be a blinkered vision when you  concentrate on the technical bit, consultant pavement designers take heed!! for what I am about to reveal may sound counter intuitive.

So when instructed to do a similar talk to senior staff I decided to take it all of it on board myself, and what I have completed (but not yet delivered) was an introduction to the design principals followed by a lengthy exercise on IAN 73 and HD 26.

Now the exercise I speak of is a spreadsheet where teams will fill in the thicknesses from the design charts in IAN 73 and HD 26 for a MSA of 80, for various CBR formations,  and discussion will follow. I have Scottish market prices on the spreadsheet. This reveals certain outputs:

performance designs are more economical than restricted.

HBM bases are more economical than blacktop bases.

The cost of the whole foundation plus pavement has various drivers, but the foundation costs predominate, despite them being around a fifth of the whole pavement + foundation cost.

This means  the choice of pavement , ie cheapest with risk analysis applied, should mean that HBM  and performance design will predominate and class 3 and class 4 foundations are far too expensive.

This has singular outcomes particularly if oil/bitumen prices soar, which does affect HBMs cost, but not to the same extent as blacktop.

I did ask HA if a economical appraisal had been conducted and the answer  was no, but I have read that IAN 73 and HA 26/06 have been subject to an economical appraisal.

Well if my spreadsheet is correct then there are two (50% of the available performance designs) that will never be used !!

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These sand martins have found a sand pile between two piles of crushed concrete, on the site of the M74 extension. Is this a statement of desperation for nesting sites? I believe this is the case, should not parks, national trust ground and other publicly held ground not erect artificial nest sites?

see links

http://www.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/conservation/advice/sandmartins/index.asp

http://www.users.freenetname.co.uk/~sandmartin/page2.html

Needless to say the birds have been protected by those cuddly construction chaps.

David Welsh, I know you are a busy man, but the artificial site on concrete legs would be an easy construction project using mostly spare materials. If you could place this  in the land made available near where the martins are now with client permission, how green? how good? how lasting and a precedent for others to follow.

http://www.ukmotorwayarchive.org/

I had forgotten about this site above, for those of us who have constructed a few of these it is a nice trip down memory lane. In those days the testing consultant was appointed by the client and under the control of the consulting engineer. Staff for the summer was the staff for the winter, difficult to find work for ten techs in the middle of winter. In the 70’s and up to the middle 80’s there was no computers either, so no  reports could be complied. We had to do the end of contract reports calculating standard deviations with calculators, nobody read the blooming reports after completion anyway. I am sure all the tedious work put into them is not even at a status of gathering dust somewhere. These reports would never have seen the inside of Victoria Quay.

But the memories are of sunny days, long hours and good people, life was not so fast then. A lot of the M90 Craigend team are still around, still in materials, some have wandered and got lost, David Hutton, Iain Campbell, John Anthony, the “digger” with his dingo, John Neilson, Graham ??? who was on the Bankfoot job, Ian Bonar, Bobby and Tony Greer, Dave Wylie…………..

come on Geoff , Bill, Henry, Lindsay, Gary help me out with these bloody names, of the disappeared!!

My Palestinian pal has been given his letter for his finalisation of employment, and has had his final redundancy meeting which I attended.  Bassam Haj Ibrahim (Bass or Baz) is our QA and environmental manager and a casualty of our recent round of redundancies. A man, given his Palestinian background, who needs luck now, more than ever. He has an obvious advantage in Middle East employment as Arabic is his first language, so I hope his work search in that direction goes well. Inshallah. Although retrenchment is a tool to use in times such as these, you do wonder at the staff to keep to win work and staff to keep for when work is won. As QA is a fundamental requirement with all/most contracts, who manages QA effectively without a QA manager?

I hear the usual politician blurb about spending to create jobs, well I’m in construction in Scotland and it is not happening, perhaps the statistics on national spending can as usual obfuscate the facts. The facts appear to be TS’s spending is on hold to increase the budget for the new Forth crossing, NIMBYS are blocking renewable energy contracts, in particular windfarms, and every client who can delay a project is doing so to play the “new” marketplace where survival and not margins are the theme. Banks are only lending money to suit themselves. Well capitalism rules so you can’t really argue with a client with a budget. Remember the Golden rule, he who has the gold, rules.

Anyway Bass I am sadder than you will know about your redundancy, as I am a Scottish male and reluctant to show my feelings, but if there is a God, and it seems doubtful given the golden rule and the state of the Palestinian people,  then may your God go with you.

Please keep in touch through this site, so we can all follow your next adventure in life.

Masalama

In the old Morrisons (just a bit before my time) when we were owned by the Morrison family there were two Ian Raes, one was sales and one was techy. I never knew this appellation applied to Ian Rae (techy) until a few months ago when I visited a Tarmac quarry that Morrisons used to own and I was having the crack with the guys.

Well Ian Rae (techy) hung up his boots at the end of June 09 (metaphorically), as Ian will wear them till they have holes in them, not that he is tight, it’s just to get value from them. Well anyway a good materials engineer is now on gardening leave forever, and a good time to exit as IAN 73 and HD 26/06 version 1 hit the specs to confuse and bemuse.

Not that Ian would not have understood them but there comes a point, and the EU specs do this, when you ask yourself. ” how did we build anything successfully before this EU joining”?

Ian Rae like me and others made a living from the motorway expansion in the 70’s, and we successfully incorporated ourselves in organisations that tendered, tested and build said roads.

The market place today is different and more varied, flood prevention and renewables, some new roads. But still we will miss the expertise of those who’s wide experience of materials engineering was built up in pioneering days and had a breadth to it, rather than some of  today’s materials engineers who are one dimensional to the materials section they belong to.

Ian  Rae (techy) will be missed, I especially liked to hear him espouse on place names and we both had a long term liking for Neil Munro’s  Parahandy tales.

Ah Dougie Dougie if Ian Rae waas here he would tell ye himsell

“Chust wan of Brutain’s hardy sons”, he certainly is, and long may he remain so.

I was in good time, having left Whitelee wind farm at 12.30 where for you road techies we are laying blacktop on a floating road, designed by several heads and road note 29, yes road note 29. Without fuss or hindrance got back to the m74 to travel south to Locherbie, when after junction 6 met solid traffic doing that stop starting shuffle. Radio Scotland informed me there was a breakdown on the south bound and traffic was building up, aye, right it was, 4/5 miles of it! there was several breakdowns in the hard shoulder, probable over heating as it was 28 degrees C. I was ever hopeful that having passed a breakdown the traffic would clear, not a bit of it. 40 mins of stop start and i see cones, two lanes into one, some bloody breakdown, it’s roadworks, and as I clear the jam I see the cause, bloody verge grass cutting. Now this is just stupid, how much does it cost to hold back 4/5 miles of traffic for 3 hours rather than pay the guys triple time to do it on a Sunday, they would be happy and so would the travelling public.

Job done

plus whats the point of cutting 1.5 metres of grass next to a verge?, I have seen in Englandshire motorway grass cutting at marker posts only and the like. Sensible cutting focussed on a purpose, not blind exercising of a contract that globally costs the public and private purse more than the spuriously beneficial action.

Our, not design and build,  A7 project is nearing completion, and I have to do falling weight defectometer (FWD) top of base and top of binder for designer validation. The design is HD 26/01 and uses figure 2.2, so the design is material choice and thickness. Not stiffness, so how does the designer validate his design? and how does he validate his design on a part built pavement that generally is still warm, but below 30 degrees C? It also occurred to my “catch up brain”, that the temp is recorded by drilling into the pavement to 100mm. I do not pretend to understand the analysis procedure, but if the binder course is 55mm thick and at around 30 degrees C and I drill into it and further into the base for 45mm and record a temp, analyse that I dare you. Surely the methodology is for the pavement (all the layers) to be at the same temperature, is it me? I have been beating a drum about FWD and gathering meaningless info at great expense, to tax payers, you and me, regarding this TS requirement.

So there is a change, a new requirement, in some tenders, appendix 1/5   we have to test top of base, top of binder, and now top of surface course. Well it seems my drum beating has backfired! Why is it not logical to look at the information gained, from top of base and top of binder and analyse it! Then take a step forward, perhaps the designers can’t analyse the data? Perhaps they should have thought of that before implementing a half baked notion of design validation? Would it not be sensible to have trial sections built and program to let the base cool, then test it, then spray bond coat, lay binder, let it cool and test that layer, followed by the surface course and again let it cool and test. This could be a modified 929 trial, and could be tested during the contract period to measure any ageing effect. Then when available during laying without interrupting the process, top of base and top of binder when cooled and not bond coated could be tested and subsequently all the surface course. There would be no need to run off with FWD data to analyse every section of work, from the trial and its back analysis the deflection figures of all sections tested would be there for comparison. Of course relying on the surface course data is too late if it is wrong, but on a design and build contract the risk is between the contractor, the designer and the blacktop supplier. Why is the client introducing this interrupting process of FWD during laying?

As i have blogged before the costs to interrupting the laying process to conduct FWD can be  more than the costs of  conducting the FWD, the people with the purse strings have not thought this out, why ? they don’t have to think.

And the purpose of this blog ? was to say yet again I am ensconced in the Marchback hotel, hence sleeping in England, the food is just sublime.

I have seen Guinea fowl running around in West Africa, but never tasted it. The Marchbank Hotel is about good food and game in particular and what does the menu provide? guinea fowl. Plus rabbit, pheasant, roe deer, halibut, lemon sole, esk salmon, venison burgers, leg of lamb cooked in the Aga for ten hours, if three of you like lamb and only eat breakfast you may manage this lamb feast. and guinea fowl ? subtle type of pheasant. Breakfast of kippers in cream is an omega start to the day, scrambled pheasant eggs with crispy bacon (pigs not fed on fish meal) with home grown fried tomatoes. Catch me on a diet! Shadow grows no less!

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Believe it or not I captured these images on the site of the new M74 at Polmadie, although I suspect the wildlife at night may be somewhat different.

I was at a pavement meeting this week for a road tender project. These meetings never used to happen, as the choice was blacktop of what thickness (except DBFOs) and the market place used to sort that out, usually after an award. As the rules are new in HD 26/06 and the now much clearer IAN 73/06, 2009 update, there is a part of the meeting that is educative. It’s not that its complicated to understand as you still end up with thicknesses of layers, it’s the choice that complicates. In this choice matrix are grey areas, the largest is the defining of the subbgrade CBR with any certainty, this particularly with soils that are not all weather types. The usual case. The other grey area that could be tempting particularly with traffic levels > 80 MSA, is modifying site won materials to make a CBGM subbase. These grey areas is where the ground investigation can help or hinder, usually the latter. Ground investigations rightly concentrate on structure foundations, I would like to see as much effort put into subgrade conditions and classification of fill, and I don’t mean the usual hundreds of plastic and liquid limits, I mean MCVs, shear strengths, OMCs, recompacted CBRs etc. Geotechnical engineers who determine the laboratory testing on road projects take note. Ground investigation has plenty of issues not the least of them being the clauses and caveats  that allow no responsibility to be subject on those that design and have the Ground investigation work carried out.

So back to choices, some are made for you in the clients documents, traffic, PSV etc, and in Scotland  there is no point in an HBM D as we are not allowed to go that thin, and of course  departures. Underlying these choices is engineering but the driving force is cost. So it falls on the poor estimator to price up the choices, here’s a scenario given you choose restricted designs, for traffic > 80 MSA.

Needs a CBGM subbase for a class 3 foundation, thickness varies with subgrade CBR, then to cost are; mix in place or plant mix, plant on site, or a nearby one off site? Plant on site has the benefit of using unregistered tippers running on red diesel.

HBM (leanmix) as a base, or blacktop? Which HBM and which type of blacktop. Then compare your costs with each other ( this is predicated on receiving sensible costs) Is HBM A, B or C with 180mm of blacktop more expensive than blacktop over  CBGM foundation class 3. Then there’s the program, CBGM and HBM have a no traffic rule for usually 7 days, fine with a project with plenty of lanes, what about ties ins? What if the client insists on keeping a certain number of lanes open at peak traffic flows, do you build temporary diversions as you have to use a CBGM subbase and leave it for seven days? the once available alternative  being a full blacktop tie in pavement laid on a night shift ready for the AM 4 x 4 school run. Has land been made available for temporary diversions?

Then if you ever bottom that out a director type will ask about performance designed foundations!!  How did he find out about them ?  The risk with performance design  is proof  of what you have built  is not just thickness but proving performance, and while the deflectograph is still the rough filter for pavement approval for Transport Scotland, then………………..

Drive you round in circles, choices!!

Well you must have come across them, the criticisers, those who have a knowledge of the rules but not the activity. Usually they are in the control line, the purse string command line. As I referred  golden rule in a previous post, he who has the gold, rules. They’re not really “jobs worths” usually well meaning, even thoughtful, helpful when it suits but lapse to criticism when the rule book cannot be obeyed. And sometimes it cannot be obeyed. Because the rule book does not apply to a current problem or covers all aspects of problems that it should.

English is a language that can be specific, detailed, yet disputes arise over meanings of words put together, say to form a contract. Perhaps the English language is too rich in meaning? Money causes polarisation of opinion and when in dispute and when the look back occurs 20/20 vision makes it clear to the look back observer how the other party went wrong. Of course in a rich diverse society we don’t have one contract between parties for a single transaction, too simple, contracts are made by the gold holders, within rules, theirs, risk is constantly eroded from gold holders and deposited on gold seekers.
So when contracts go wrong, who accumulates the most opprobrium? well those that have strived to fulfil their tasks, the problem solvers, the gold seekers, the gold holders set the rules, know them, and with self satisfied smirks raise problems and cannot solve them. that’s why they’re gold holders.
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!

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I like Oman, and it’s people, even though when I had to leave within a month when my work permit was not granted, I had 5mins left on my visit visa, at the airport, Mr jobs worth said, your lucky, another five mins and we would have to jail you. Back to Dubai I went.
I was subsequently jailed, but that’s another story.
Anyway I loved Oman, real people, real links to the history of their land, settled they were. I could sense the difference between Dubai, Saudi, Bahrain, and Oman, settled, the folks there had been there a while and their attitude was who are you and well met. lovely people no airs and graces, people of the land and the sea.
So I was there to build this road from Al Seeb to Al Khawd working for Desert Line Projects, their first “road” project. Everything from scratch, people, non earthmoving plant, the lot. Now this is where being an expat stretches you much more than working at home. I decided with others where the camp would be, where we would get the water, what pump we needed to get the water to the camp, all that start up stuff usually done by others. Then later, what crusher to buy, I also bought from Costain in Muscat, a road spray tanker and had to figure out how it worked, and then train a driver and sprayman how to work it. This wasn’t the modern type where cabin controls did the valves, a poor bloke had to stand on the foot plate at the rear and operate the levers. Did he get black and sticky? yes he did, so I gave him dirty money. We had 23 culverts to build and we bought three reverse drum mixers with weigh gear and moved them from culvert to culvert to do relatively small pours. Yeh it was hick town, but it worked. Oh I also, with help from our camp boss, who was an Indian called Daz, a completely competent guy, the type you wish you had a dozen of, made a redundant small  swimming pool viable again, chlorine the lot. What had that to do with a road job? It was the project managers, a great fellow called Rodger Inker who I worked with in Dubai and recommended him to Desert line. The point I make is if you are an expat with a contractor and survive, you are in my opinion more employable than your colleagues that you left at home. Because you have learned to solve problems not just raise them.

If you want to visit a real natural part of the middle east, go to Oman. Dubai is just a huge disney world, they do have vision and balls I have to say cos they know when the oil runs out? what then? Oman is for me the place to go back to, it was, as still is warm and welcoming. And unlike me you wont be forced to leave, as tourists are now welcome.