Field Trip to Belgium and the Netherlands: Day 2

Day 2 of the field trip focused on Amsterdam (for the blog post about Day 1 click here).

• Ijburg - for a series of presentations about Ijburg and the design of the Breeze Hotel and also a tour of Ijburg and the floating homes
• The Fluor Office for a workshop and lunch
• The IXAS project for a presentation and visit to the Gaasperdammertunnel
• The city of Amsterdam - for a walking tour and a group meal

At the Breeze Hotel in Ijburg

And now, the write-up (from the students) of the presentation on approach and principles from Fluor Netherlands:

Overview of Flour - Fluor B.V. (Fluor Netherlands) has been operating in the Netherlands for more than 55 years, providing engineering, procurement, construction, maintenance and project management services for Clients throughout Europe and around the world. 

In the Fluor Office

Fluor operates a comprehensive project execution plan incorporating; Engineering, procurement, fabrication and Maintenance. They operate on the ethos of transforming the world by building prosperity and empowering progress, with key emphasis on safety, value creation, collaborative working through advanced work package planning (AWP).

Productivity Challenge - Fluor acknowledges the challenge of productivity within the industry and achieves this by minimising project risks and gaining competitive edge by improved cost and schedule. Productivity on site was also incorporated into the collaborative planning process to minimise waste. The analysis on the percentage split of foreman’s time was excellent example of how a specific activity can be improved. e.g 30% travel, 20% planning and only 15% supervision. The AWP process gives them a 10% reduction in waste. 

Fluor Provides Project and Program Management Services incorporates collaborative working structures both from a system, processes planning and delivery perspective. On agreement of the project scope, the team sets out a plot plan and layout drawings including construction and work areas. The planning team through the pre-commissioning process put together the AWP packages, these include the CWA and CWP. This process incorporates a 12 weeks lag and then feeds in to primavera then to procurement. The systems use GPS tagging of materials in the warehouse for all the specific work packages. This provides full visibility and integrated planning. These is usually a temporary facility location where materials can be retrieved and delivered on to site. At critical times there is level 5 monitoring which is done by the hour. This process helps Fluor to improve productivity by 10%. 

Key highlight for me was the safety moment where the supervisor was helping to perform the job and he was not supervising. This was picked up as a safety moment. Lessons learned are: Know your role; Perform your job; Don’t fulfil someone else’s role. So, the ethos was not just to get the job done, but get the job done safely and go home to your families.

Gaining insight in to the AWP ethos of FLUOR - puzzle and lesson learnt

AWP is a method of designing and planning a construction project to improve performance. It is about making sure that the project is design and planned to be easier to build, commission and start up. We were put into groups to assemble a puzzle. On our first attempt, using the unmarked puzzle, the process was inefficient although we followed the same brief and we took longer to put it together. We also decided to communicate more trying to put the puzzle together and we noticed that we were working faster. We also could not understand why other people finished first, but eventually is transpired that they had defined work packages with marked puzzles.

We can infer that projects go wrong when people do not have defined tasks or do not know what to do and fall into argument. the first puzzle failed to take off due to not identifying performance based on team task and coordination. Which happens in real life project when there's lack of organization creates problems and delays.

On the second attempt we had a box with puzzle pieces in envelop numbered. The stages were broken down for us which means we knew where to start and we worked in a collaborative way we were communicating well, and everyone knew what they had to do. It took us less time to put it together and we were all happy of our achievement. I was impressed on how fast it went when we knew what we had to do and in what direction to go. I think this model should be more developed and used in construction projects.

Fluor Project also taught us how team performance can work well and effectively when projects are structured in stages. One thing the team gathered from visiting Fluor is how health and safety is important to them. We were shown a video before the presentation started. It is impressive as health and safety is really important in the work- place.

Site Visit - Gaasperdammertunnel

After our visit to Fluor office, we were taken to the Gaasperdammertunnel site which is one of the key projects in the Amsterdam currently. We were given a brief presentation on the past, present and future of one of the biggest tunnels in the Amsterdam that is GAASPERDAMMERTUNNEL.

The project is the collaboration between Ballast Nedam, Flour, Heijmans, and 3i. Gaasperdammerweg tunnel is the expansion of the A9 between the Holendrecht and Diemen junctions.

The presentation was organised by the Project Director Mr. Pieter Teeuw and Assistant Manager Mr. Ron Van Hooije. And the presentation started with the Safety Measures and introduction towards the Site Safety. The objective of this project is to Improve traffic flow and to reduce traffic congestion. The client for the project is Rijkswaterstaat and the project contract type is DBFM which is Design – Build – Finance – Maintain, with a value of USD 880 million, which will be awarded in Lump sum. The maintenance period will end after 25th June 2038. Some of the facts about the tunnel are: 2 x 5 lanes and 1 Tidal Lane; 3 km Land tunnel with a trace of 9 km; New Bridge over river Gaasp and Modification at Junction Holendrecht.

When it comes to the DBFM part, it is a joint venture of 4 Big companies such as FLUOR, 3I, Ballast Nedam & Heijmans and which will be financed by SPC (IXAS Zuid-Oost).

Project Goals

• To improve the traffic congestion as the tunnel will have 5 lanes per driving direction and an exchange lane. It will make northern Randstad more accessible.
• The 3 km tunnel will improve the air quality of the surrounding and will reduce sound.
• To build a large park on the roof tunnel that will connect neighbourhoods in Amsterdam Southeast.

The Tunnel has 130 emergency doors, 117 Ventilator fans, 366 emergency post cabinets, 1800 Speakers, 80km cable lines, 1.125 km cables, 2800 lighting fittings in the corridors, 4300 light fittings and 6-meter fire extinguishing pipe. The idea of incorporating reflecting white asphalt will provide efficiency in electricity consumption and it is indeed one of the smart ideas incorporated in the project, notwithstanding the impact on the climate.

After the presentation, we had an opportunity to visit the tunnel site in a coach and we were able to see the tunnel exclusively before it was opened to public, months in advance. It was an excellent experience overall, seeing some new technologies adopted and the health and safety concerns in the Netherlands. The project also impetus to the environment and neighbours. In the Netherlands they built everything in a safe manner for the environment and energy efficiency. They also plan for future expansion which is very important these days.

Our special thanks to Oxford Brookes University and FLUOR for providing us with this opportunity to visit Netherlands.