Career Episode 1
CE1.1 Introduction
After I finished the second year of my postgraduate studying, in order to obtain more experiences in engineering practice, I worked as an internship in a civil engineering company in China. I was employed by Guiyang Sanwei Engineering Construction Supervising CO. LTD (Naiyi Engineering Consultancy) from December 2016 to March 2017. During this period, I was appointed as a civil and project engineering internship in the project of the construction of Zhongtian Huizhancheng Kindergarten Region B. In this career episode, I am going to present my engineering practical experience.
CE1.2 Background
CE1.2.1 Company Profile and Nature of the Project
Guiyang Sanwei Engineering Construction supervising CO.LTD was established in 1996 with the registered capital of 6 million Chinese Yuan. It has the qualifications of the ministry of construction engineering supervision, highway engineering supervision, engineering cost consulting (Class B) and government procurement (Class B). In 2004, it was approved by the Guizhou Province Construction Department to be the first batch of project management enterprises in Guizhou, China.
I worked in the project the construction of Zhongtian Huizhancheng Kindergarten Region. In this project, the total construction area of Zhongtian Huizhancheng Kindergarten (Region B) is 55596, including five buildings with 2-storey basement parking garages (three teaching buildings and two school dining halls). The main structure forms of buildings are reinforced concrete structures and the wall material is Autoclaved aerated masonry block MU5. Also, the pile foundation was adopted. The construction area is shown in the red circle in Figure 1 and 2.
Figure 1: The construction site
Figure 2: Details of the construction direction
CE1.2.2 Objectives
The objective of constructability management is to achieve the most efficient process of initial construction and on-going maintenance within the constraints of other projects objectives. I was an auxiliary supervisor and consultant in this project, mainly doing the analysis of the feasibility of the construction based on the materials provided by the construction company. My target was to apply my knowledge learned from university to the real project and improve my abilities of addressing issues about construction drawings, quality control, and budget control and estimation.
CE1.2.3 My duties
Figure 2 shows clear project supervision agency, and I worked under the supervision of the senior engineer.
Figure 3: The project supervision agency
I was mainly in charge of the supervision work of the construction of building 4, which was the last section for the entire construction project. My main duties were as follows:
¬ Understand the design drawings, method statements, construction codes and manual guidelines to avoid mistakes that may create cost;
¬ Review the construction scheme to ensure it reach the Standards’ requirements and it is viable;
¬ Check the construction materials;
¬ Assist project manager and senior engineer in progress quality and safety control;
¬ Prepare weekly reports on the project's progress, quality, safety and existing problems.
CE1.3 Personal Engineering Activities
CE1.3.1 Professional standards
In civil engineering, construction standards are the basic guide books of all kinds of engineering survey, planning, design, construction, installation, acceptance and other issues which are needed to reach a consensus. In terms of project management and acceptance, standards such as “Code for acceptance of constructional quality of concrete structures” (GB50204-2002(2011), “The code of construction project management” (GB50319-2013) and Auto CAD drawings are especially important in order to improve the level of construction project management, regulating the behaviour of project supervision. Furthermore, standards such as “Technical code for safety of forms in construction” (JGJ162-2008), “Construction of safety technical specifications” (JGJ80-91) and “Technical code for safety of temporary electrification on construction site” (JGJ46-2005) have been playing an important role in the protection of construction engineering quality, human safety and other social and public interests.
By studying these standards and codes, I understood how project management departments control all construction phases successfully. For example, according to “Unified standard for constructional quality acceptance of building engineering” (GB50300-2013), it is required that project management engineers and site supervisors should be familiar with the design documents and special construction plans, construction drawings before construction. Site supervisors and engineers should double check all construction materials, such as soil condition, water to concrete rate and other semi-finished products. More specifically, project management departments are expected to review the qualification of subcontractors, the quality assurance system, site safety system, the construction organization design and the special construction plans during the whole construction process, requiring for construction units to implement the process of construction according to the plans or construction organization design that has been approved.
Through my practical experience, I have learned that in order to complete a certain project successfully, following standards and having a great contribution to team work are both important. If we only solve problems by following standards or a dead rule, without communicating with others and sharing ideas, problems could not be solved thoroughly and vice versa. In other words, nothing can be solved if one of the skills mentioned above is missing.
CE1.3.2 Analyse the quality control and supervision of foundation construction
In the construction of buildings, there were 416 manual excavated piles with a diameter of 1200mm according to the drawings. Piles ended in the moderated weathered rock layer with a depth of 600mm in rock layer and it required a characteristic value of bearing capacity of 4300 kPa. The concrete strength grade of pile wall was C30. According to the project construction drawings, the deepest pile was 15.9 m and the pile details have been given in tables below.
Pile number
Characteristic value of vertical bearing capacity of a single pile
Head size (expanded)
Pile reinforcement
Diameter(mm)
Do(mm)
b
h1
Long longitudinal reinforcement
Short longitudinal reinforcement
Stiffening ring
Spiral hoop
ZH1
4850KN
1200
1200
9C18
9C18
C12@2000
A8@200
ZH2(Expanded head)
7500KN
1200
1500
150
600
9C18
9C18
C12@2000
A8@200
Table 1: The table of piles
Number of tower crane
Pile number
Pile diameter/m
Pile depth/m
Reinforcing cage weight/T
1#
35#
Minimum weight of reinforcing cage
1.2
2.20
0.086
147#
Minimum weight of reinforcing cage
1.2
14.63
0.571
2#
169#
Minimum weight of reinforcing cage
1.2
2.20
0.086
190#
Minimum weight of reinforcing cage
1.2
15.90
0.620
3#
277#
Minimum weight of reinforcing cage
1.2
2.00
0.078
457#
Minimum weight of reinforcing cage
1.2
15.75
0.614
4#
297#
Minimum weight of reinforcing cage
1.2
2.60
0.101
344#
Minimum weight of reinforcing cage
1.2
12.10
0.472
Table 2: Artificial dig-hole pile reinforcing cage weight list
In this project, I noticed that only ZH2 pile needed to do head expanding design and the expanded head was under the bearing layer which requires a differential blasting during the construction, and then artificial trimming. What’s more, as an engineer, I should always consider the worst cases (decision and assumption) to ensure the safety problems of the design. Thus, I calculated and collated the bearing capacity and loads many times and analysed my result with my colleagues to make sure that the structure will have sufficient capacity to ensure the structure keeping available. From this design, I understood that a highly knowledgeable (experienced) designer has an ability to guarantee his or her designs are constructible. It depends on past experience, as well as theoretical knowledge (standards requirements).
CE1.3.3 Review Structure Drawings
In order to minimise the mistakes that may occur during the construction process, reviewing structure drawings and sketches is important in every stage of the construction period. As a member of the construction project, I reviewed the Auto CAD sketches of pile walls, showing as follows.
Figure 4: Pile head cover
Figure 5: Pile breast wall
Figure 6: ZH2 Pile
I checked the detail structure drawings of pile walls and expanded ZH2 piles. During the checking process, I found there were some inconsistencies of some structural parts and some miss-calculations. After I found the problem, in order to assure the construction quality and progress, I reported to my chief engineer immediately and suggested him to do a further rectification. He agreed with me.
CE1.3.4 Assist in filling up construction log and preparing weekly reports
Every week, I checked construction log and helped senior engineers prepare weekly reports. All these were completed on time by using Excel. I also assisted quality surveyor in estimating the cost of construction materials and monitoring budget.
CE1.4 Summary
This was the first construction project I participated in during my student life. Through this working experience, I deeply understood the overall process of a construction project. During my work experience, I have learned a lot of practical skills that cannot be taught in school. I learned a lot of skills related to engineering design software, communication and project management, which improved my professional engineering knowledge and practical ability. According to the three-month experience, I found out that the project management and supervision work is interesting but challengeable due to complex factors such as construction site conditions, structure design, financial conditions and so forth. It requires strong communication skills, teamwork skills and self-study ability. This internship experience inspired and encouraged me to pay more attention and passion in civil engineering.