What problem?

Thought it was way past time that I actually put something up here about what I’m up to. I’m currently in Newport working for my sponsor company. We are building an extension to the existing water treatment works that cleans the water that the people of Cardiff and South East Wales are drinking. This will further filter the water so that by the end there will apparently be less impurities in tap water than bottled water!

I was selected for the job to gain some experience in mass reinforced concrete. That’s fine but unfortunately the job has only been going for a couple of months so we’re not exactly flying! However each week more guys come onto the job and so the work picks up. It’s a pain (or it’s painful perhaps) when your hour’s setting out on a Monday keep the steel fixers going till Wednesday, the chippy’s going till Thursday (given an extra half hour to set some levels) and the concrete gang Friday.

There are perks though. I recently attended a scholarship event at Head Office. There were various parts, some more fun and/or interesting than others. We had a presentation regarding precast concrete structures by our subsidiary, Malling, which as far as concrete goes was pretty cool (they can hit 60Nmm^-2 in three days!). We each had to give a five minute presentation on our own project. Fortunately we weren’t all in together though I did have to sit through presentations from a lots of QS’ which I didn’t always follow. One guy (an Engineer I dread to think) managed to take 15 minutes however, ironically concluding by stating that the number one lesson he has learned on site is time management. We pissed ourselves.