Basic reinforce concrete beam formwork component.

Reinforce concrete structure when constructed using conventional method is as easy as industrial building system. The basic is always about Setting out, formwork, concreting work, bar bending work and installation of each of these component. All it takes is practice and practice until perfect. Below is picture of basic formwork component. All component are built with timber.

PICTURE 1: FALSEWORK

PICTURE 2: FORMWORK

PICTURE 3: PARTIALY COMPLETE FORMWORK INSTALLATION.

PICTURE 4: COMPLETE BASIC FORMWORK INSTALLATION

Guideline For Project Quality Plan

Project Quality plan is an essential document that any contractor or consultant must have. It is the life line of a project that will ensure the end product that is going to be delivered to client meet all the requirement and specifications. Some how, most of contractor does not have any idea on how to come out with this Project Quality Plan. Below is the the guideline on what shall be include in the Project Quality Plan. In other words, Project Quality Plan contents.

1. INTRODUCTION.

    1.1 Contract Particulars
    1.2 Project Description
    1.3 Site Plan
    1.4 Master Work Program

2.0 PROJECT MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATION
    2.1 Project Team
          2.1.1 Project Team Organization Chart
          2.1.2 Roles and Responsibilities
    2.2 Quality Assurance and Quality Control Team (QA/QC)
          2.2.1 QA/QC Team Organization Chart
          2.2.2 Roles and Responsibilities
    2.3 Manpower And Machineries on Site
          2.3.1 List of Manpower
          2.3.2 List of Machineries

3.0 DOCUMENT AND DATA CONTROL
      3.1 Project Files
      3.2 Incoming Project Files
      3.3 Outgoing Project Files
      3.4 Distribution / Control of Drawings

4.0 QA/QC ON CONSTRUCTION PROCEDURES
      4.1 Method Statement
      4.2 Laboratory Testing
      4.3 Submission and Approval of Materials
      4.4 Handling, Storage And Delivery
      4.5 Machinery And Equipment Controls
      4.6 Inspection And Test
      4.7 Non-Conforming Works And Actions To Be Taken

5.0 QA/QC IMPLEMENTATION PLAN
      5.1 Standard Forms and Checklist
      5.2 QA/QC Monthly Report
      5.3 Inspection And Test Plan
      5.4 QA/QC Records
      5.5 QA/QC Audits.

Tender Estimation

Winning a tender is a tricky process that any contractor have to endure with. There is some criteria that contractor need to meet in order for us to be recommend as potential contractor for a project. Among the requirement are;
1. Cash flow ( Financial Capacity)
2. Plan, Machinery,Equipment, Labour and technical staff.
3. Work Experience
4. Current Work load
5. Achievements
6. Reputations
7. Project Pricing.
8. Communication and negotiation skills.

However out of all the listed above, Project Pricing always become the turning point for a contractor. This will determine weather we will win the project or not. Most of contractors will fulfils all the above requirements that will qualified them for the tender. When this situation happened the other factor will be the pricing. The question is What is the average cost that contractors offered. From our experience, the normal practice, all those contractor which offered the cost that is with in 15% below and above the average pricing will be consider for next stage of evaluation.

In some country, most of tendering period will take about 3 weeks to 1 month from the date of a project are publish to allow contractor to make calculation and submit their bid on the tender closing date. Very often bidders will rely on the "schedule of rates" which is publish by Public Work department. In my opinion this practice by contractor is quite dangerous. Why? The reason is the publish "Schedule of Rate (S.O.R)" is normally base on the past year record. Hence it might not relevant at the point of tendering. Because of this some adjustment have to be made to this "S.O.R" by contractor which will not reflect the current market price. In view of this, we believe that having our own estimation will be more accurate.

Doing price estimation is not and easy work. Contractor need to do
1. Quantity take of, 
2. Numbers and type of equipment required, 
3. Duration needed to complete each scope of work, 
4. Current market rate for each and every item that had been identify to complete the project, 
5. Activities involve for each scope of work, 
6. Management cost for supervising the project, 
7. Profit margin, unknown risk to contractor in executing their work and 
8. also some public relation cost.

By listing all of this item, contractor already minimised error in cost estimation and had help contractor to control their losses and at the end of the day, contractor will be able to offered a competitive project cost for a tender.

There is lots of software and manual form that can be use to do this estimating work. The picture below is what I use to do mine.

This is a screen shot for some of the form that I create for my tendering purpose.

As for the "S.O.R" that had been mentioned earlier in this article, there is some set of rules and guideline that contractor had to be abide with to ensure that their estimation is not out of date. For instance, S.O.R publish this year is base on Last year average market price, therefore to use this S.O.R in our tender estimation, contractor have to allow for some increase in price for current year. Say 5% increase. Apart from that, contractor must also determine the S.O.R is publish for which area and the percentage increment according to distance from that particular location. By Using this method it eliminate almost all of the process that i bold earlier. Save time!!!!.

Ask ourself, are we satisfied with the estimation we did by using S.O.R? Do we know What is the actual cost for the project? How much is the Profit Margin? How much is the unknown cost we allow? and if we have to go through pricing negotiation with the future client, How much lower are we willing to go for? 5% discount, 10% discount on the offered price? we might have no idea. At the end we will say we cannot afford to give discount. The key to this are what are the estimate for actual construction cost, how much is the unknown risk that we allow for and how much is the profit margin? Only you know.

Happy tendering.

Free sample of External Drain Inspection Check List

Quality control of a product in construction is very important part of construction work. Below is sample of inspection check list for external drain construction work.  Right click  on the image to have a clear view.

How to estimate earthwork construction period.

How to estimate the duration required to complete Earthwork Excavation? Estimation on the numbers of days required to complete the task by utilisation of machinery does not required complex calculation. All it take is simple mathematics and some knowledge on the efficiency of  machine capability.  Below is an example of the calculation.

1. Quantity of the Earthwork Excavation = 1000 cu.m.

2. The machinery needed = Excavator and Lorries 

     Assumption : 1 no. of Excavator and 1 no. of lorry required.

                        : Excavator need 3 minutes to make a cycle of excavation works.

                        : Excavator Capacity = 1.5 cu.m

                        : Lorries capacity =  10 ton

                        : Lorry need 5 minutes to make a cycle of transportation.

                        : Specific Gravity of the earth = 2.7

Base on the assumption, the calculation is as follows;

         a) Duration required to fill a 10 ton lorry 

              : 10 ton lorry bucket capacity = 10/2.7 = 3.7 cu.m

              : cycle require to fill the lorry bucket = 3.7/1.5 = 2.4666 Cycle or 3 cycle.

              : hence, time required for filling the lorry = 3 cycle X 3 minutes = 9 minutes

         b) Duration required for lorry to complete a cycle of transporting and unloading =5 minutes

              : Therefore total  time taken for one cycle of earthwork = 9 minutes + 5 minutes = 14 minutes.

              : 14 minutes is required to complete 3.7 cu.m of earthwork.

         c) Duration required to complete 1000 cu.m earthwork;

             : 1000 cu.m / 3.7 cu.m = 270.27 cycle = 271 cycle.

             : hence, time require to complete 1000 cu.m earthwork = 271 cycle X 14 Minutes = 3794 minutes

            

         d) Number of working hours per day = 8 hours

             

         e) Convert the Duration in minutes into days;

             : 3794/ (8 X 60) = 7 days.

Therefore total number of days to complete the 1000 cu.m of earthwork (cutting and cart away for a short distance) by utilised 1 number of excavator and 1 number of 10 ton lorry is 7 days. Hence your construction period is only 7 days. However this example is excluding number of unworkable day due to rain.

If the number of lorry is going to be increase to 2 then some correction can be make to the duration required to complete the whole cycle by by 5 minutes. this is because the waiting time for the excavator can be reduce by 2.5 minutes each for both lorry. Therefore the complete cycle can be consider as 9 minutes only.

With this free example hope that you will have nice time to plan for your earthwork construction.

               

RFI (Request for inspection) sample

REQUEST FOR INSPECTION
CONTRACT NO: PROJECT TITLE:
REFERENCE NO:			DATE:
TO:			ATTENTION:
ACKNOWLEDGE RECEIPT BY: DATE:
We hereby request for inspection on : For the following work:(Tick in the box below (√))
BUILDING WORK
Boundary setting out		Building setting out			Setting out ( specify):
earthwork		Foundation			Beam		Column
Staircase		Reinforcement			Formwork		Roof truss
Slab		Perimeter drain			Apron slab		Wall/partition
Roof covering		Door frame			Door leave		Window frame
Window leave		Rain water drain Pipe			Gutter		Plastering
Painting		Floor Screeding			Floor tile		Wall tile
Water Proofing		Septic tank			Other :
CIVIL WORK
Earthwork		Road subgrade			Road sub base		Road base
Sewage manhole		Waste water manhole			Drain Alignment		Road Alignment
Road side drain		Flexible Pavement			Fencing		culvert
Road kerb		Road Marking			Signages
Mechanical & Electrical works
Internal water pipe		External Water pipe			Water tank		switches
conduit		wiring			Power point		Lighting
Lightning arrester		MCB			DB		MSB
Cold water fitting & accessories					Electrical fitting & Accessories
Other:
Location:
SO/SOR/RE/COW The above work inspected on : Inspected by:			Witness By Contractor: Signature: Date:
Approved (      )                  Not Approved (      ) Remarks:

Related Topic:
RFI
Request For Information 2010
Request for information form 2012
Inspection form for reinforcement installation
Document control and Correspondance Document Register

Material approval log form

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Construction of Brickwall

Construction of a wall is a prominent activity in a building work. building wall are categorised in two that is External Wall and Internal wall which is including the inside building partition. Building wall can be build using various material. Among them are masonry, Timber, concrete, metal and mixture of material which can be call composite. Each of this material have their own construction method to ensure the integrity of the building. However over here we will focus on masonry wall.

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Masonry wall

Timber wall

Metal wall (decorative)

Concrete wall

Masonry wall usually come in three variance of thickness. The three variance are Half brick wall, one brick wall and double brick wall. The construction of these three variance of thickness is actually the same. below is how the construction of the masonry wall a done.

Step 1:
setting out of the wall position by method of string and plumbob.

Plumbob

 setting out of the wall position shall be in accordance with the architectural construction drawings.

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Step 2:
construction of the wall base follows after step 1. construction of this foundation consist of  a layer cement mortar (usually 1:3 ratio) , a layer of Exmet wire embedded in the cement mortar, a layer of damp proof course and the top layer is another layer of cement mortar.

Step 3:
Immediately after the top layer of the foundation, a layer of masonry shall be lay with the guidance of the previously installed string. This string will ensure the verticality and horizontal line of the wall.

Step 4:
On the top of the masonry layer, another layer of cement mortar shall follow. This process shall continue until it reach the fourth course of the masonry layer.

step 5:
Right after the fourth course of the masonry layer, another layer of cement mortar shall be laid follow by a layer of exmet wire then covered with another layer of cement mortar.

Step 6:
Repeat the process from step 3 until step 5. All the process shall be the same until the whole piece of wall is complete.

Step 7:
After the completion of the masonry work for the wall. the next sequence of the activity will be wall cover up using cement mortar. The covered up work is called plastering.

The construction of the masonry wall is relatively easy. However do not overlook on the the housekeeping process. I Stressed the words of housekeeping here because many masonry layer usually failed to cleaned the excess mortar that drop on the ground just next to the foundation. This excess must be cleaned before it get hardened. If this excess not cleaned it will affect the work of the plasterer and also the floor renderer.

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CONSTRUCTION: TRACKING CONTRACTUAL AND TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

TRACKING CONTRACTUAL & TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

Project planning and management is the father to a successful construction. Establishing a Master work program is the initial step to start a construction project. Without work program, a contractor will easily get lost in ensuring that his project will be completed on time.

Work program is a path that all contractor shall follow closely. It is a guidance to all project management staff on what and when an activity shall start and finish. However Physical activity alone is not the only thing that is crucial for achieving the project goal. Proper tracking of documentation ranging from contractual requirement to technical correspondence are also playing an important role in ensuring the physical activity can be implement smoothly. 

Most contractor always failed to keep track on this matter. Due to that, I publish here a free sample on how I do my tracking. By filling this form I can easily know what been submitted and what is the status. For example, in any building construction activity, there is a lot of construction materials that need to be submitted for approval.prior to its usage for construction. All contractor know that they have to do this early and most of the material sample and specification usually had been submitted for approval with-in  three to four month after the award of a project. However some of the material submission needs few months to be study and consider before any approval is given. In this case, how does the tracking form become an important tool to ensure that the approval can be received. 

This is how it happen. Every weeks or months contractor will review what activity will start the next following week or month. By knowing the activity, contractor will immediately know what is the construction material needed and do this material need any approval. If  the answer is yes, than the form if properly recorded it will show whether the material had been submitted or not and what is the status of approval. With this approach, contractor do not have to flip open the whole file to know what is the status of the material. Does this look easier to us. 

Therefore, by implementing this tracking form in the project monitoring process by managers or engineers it will help in making the construction works can be done smoothly.  

Construction Rules and Regulations

Dear all that already involve in construction , please follow the rules and regulation of your respective area where you conduct your business. Don't waste your hard earn money to pay summons.



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