Selamat Hari Raya Puasa

Today we took the time to prepare for the casting of the first storey slab. This floor houses the main reception, a Heritage Centre, Admissions, the Foundation office and Alumni, The High School office, University Advising and the Head of Campus offices along with a large social and gathering place for students and staff that will link into the tent plaza area. 

The area that we are about to construct.

One good reason to study mandarin - We have a wide variety of nationalities on the site ....The plan broken up into teams and hopefully clear to all....

Concrete "Elephant" pumps on site ready for tomorrow.

And finally just in case this blog gives the impression that everything always goes perfectly to plan..  This wasn't in the plan for the fire hydrant installation today.......

The conclusion....

After raining most of the morning - 4pm finally getting going on the casting,

Some of the 92 concrete trucks involved in this concrete pour...

02:45 - Finished! 622 m3 of Concrete formed into a building!

Preparing for the new academic year.

There is a TV programme from the UK, called "Grand Designs" which tracks construction projects, the presenter, Kevin McCloud, follows a similar presentation format for every project and about midway through every programme, when the project seems to be drifting into challenging waters, he turns to the camera, out of earshot of the project team, and quietly suggests that they may have approached things a little differently...

I wonder what he would say if he saw our car park exit knowing that it needs to open in 10 days time.....

One thing for sure, it would make good TV...

Connection between old and new car park - Note the construction of the new building over the existing exit - A challenging undertaking  but will it mean an added degree of safety as the construction progress above. 

New exit..

Old car park exit - reconstructed as part of the new building. You can see the new level and clear evidence of the 3 metres of soil that has been cut away..

connection to the road - you can now see the front of the building.

Every decently-made object, from a house to a lamp post to a bridge, spoon or egg cup, is not just a piece of 'stuff' but a physical embodiment of human energy, testimony to the magical ability of our species to take raw materials and turn them into things of use, value and beauty.

Kevin McCloud - Grand Designs.

At the moment - I would settle for a finished car park exit..

Update: 10th August - Car Park exit now open!

ERSS - What on earth is that?

Many countries in Asia have romantic sounding nicknames, "the land of the rising sun", " the pearl of the orient" and I was attracted a while ago to work in the romantically sounding "Venice of the East" which after a few years dawned on me as perhaps being based on the simple recognition of the fact that cities are subject to widespread flooding and occasional subsidence.... Now for those living in Singapore, (and travelling . like me, down the PIE, KPE, MCE and AYE to get to work) eventually realise that we inhabit the "Island of the Acronym"  hopefully a tourist draw in its own right one day...

So to add one more to that evergrowing list, we have the "ERSS" or Earth Retaining and Stabilizing System. This is usually defined as "Any structure, structural system or other means used to maintain the shape of excavation during construction, earth filling or cutting" We are using such a structure to help us make a big wall in the car park adjacent to the tent plaza.

I suppose it could also be called PTPDS - That is to say the" Prevention of the Tent Plaza disappearing system" as it the civil engineering structure that is supporting the tent plaza whilst we dig out the basement car park and build a new retaining wall to support it. This is one of the more complex areas of construction in this project and this is a simple explanation of what we are doing..



This chap on youtube explains this "top down" construction method much better than me in this video but we have a few particular variations on our site that are not shown in  this video.

Step one for us is to drive in "Soldier Piles" these are simple steel I beams driven vertically into the ground in a line, (I suppose like soldiers standing to attention?) we then infill these piles with timber planks, called timber lagging...

Here you can see the soldier piles driven into the ground and being filled in with the timber lagging.

We then add another steel Ibeam horizontally between the soldier piles. This is called a waler and further reinforces this system and this prevents the solider piles from bending under the weight of the soil and other pressures behind them and coming out of line.

Soldier piles and waler complete - we can now move on to add more support  to the waler by bracing it back against the finished foundations. Whilst this is costly in terms of time as we have to wait for the foundations to catch up, it is by far the safest and most prudent way of construction in this school environment. 

Here you can clearly see the series of struts to add a supporting force to the waler by bracing against the foundations and ensure absolutely no chance of movement of the ERSS. Safety is paramount in this project.  Note the think layer of concrete on the slope of soil to be removed. This prevents erosion of the soil in the heavy rain of Singapore, as this soil erosion could cause pollution to the surrounding waterways.

A close up of the plate that we attach to the foundations which we then attach the structs to hold them firmly against the ERSS

Once these struts are in place, we can safely remove move soil and continue to add the timber planks down the soldier piles 

A nice top down view of a completed section of ERSS. It was completed in sections with progressive construction as each section was complete. In this photo you can see the area on the left being prepared for the foundations and the area on the right undergoing excavation.

The final strip of foundations being cast alongside the completed ERSS.  Once these foundations are complete, we can start to remove the struts. Overall a complex construction sequence completed safely and efficiently.  Phew...

Behind the finished retaining wall. We will now remove the steel (as much as we can!) and then backfill the gap with soil