Civil Engineering Project Management (4th Edition)

82 Civil Engineering Project Management
7.3 Site field personnel
Section engineers carry out or organize the surveying and setting out work, and
conduct any necessary technical tests. Initially there will be considerable work
to do in site levelling, and setting out the main grid lines for the project. There
will then be much detailed setting-out work to do, as required by the foremen
on the works. Temporary works may have to be designed and set out, such as
access roads, power lines, water supply lines, drainage, concrete foundations
for the batching plant and cranes, and so on. In addition it is normally the job
of the section engineer to record progress and keep progress charts up-to-date.
On small sites, the job of sub-agent and section engineer may be combined.
The plant manager holds a key position on site. His job can be onerous since
construction work is held up if plant is not available due to breakdowns or failure
to order in time. For sites in the UK and other developed countries much
of the plant used on site is hired and kept in maintenance by the hirer. This
requires constant liaison between the plant manager and the hire firms used.
Where the contractor’s own plant is used, maintenance and repair of this will
be needed. Assisting the plant manager will be fitters and welders and he
will often have to get repairs done at times outside working hours when
construction is not proceeding. He will also have to maintain power supplies
to the site and its offices.
A general foreman is widely employed on the many construction projects
which are not too large for one person to control. He then acts as the agent’s
right hand man for the execution of the work in the field, his duty being to
keep the work moving ahead daily as the agent has planned it. He often has
much authority on site, and any junior engineer who gets at cross purposes
with him may find his days numbered. Such men are often astonishingly capable
from their long experience of construction. For instance, their familiarity
with soil characteristics may often enable them to judge by eye that some foundation
or fill material is ‘no good’, long before a site engineer’s tests prove it
so. He will have a knowledge of what machines can do, and the basic principles
of surveying and levelling. At his best he is an all-round craftsman in the
art of civil engineering construction, and many of the great constructions of
the past owe their quality to the general foreman who took charge of their construction.
The professional engineer can often learn much from him. On many
civil engineering jobs the general foreman is the key outside person in charge
of construction.
The skilled men include reinforcement fixers, steel erectors, concreters, formwork
carpenters, bricklayers, pipe jointers, crane and machine operators,
miners and other trade specialists. The contractor will often have a small
nucleus of experienced tradesmen in his permanent employment, getting
additional tradesmen through the local employment office, or advertising
for them. Specialist sub-contractors or labour-only gangs are now widely used to
carry out specific trade work. Labour-only gangs are self-organizing groups of
workers under their own foreman or gang leader. Quite often travelling gangs