Our first build of 2023 is underway at our new home in Hallam as we welcomed our first cohort to this year’s Big Build Bridge Program.
Following registration and the initial formalities, the program was opened by MRPV’s Danny Benjamin, MACA’s Mark O’Reilly and WGA’s Mario Saliba, who shared their insights and experience from their careers and offered sound advice on the opportunity that the cohort has to learn, network, develop and overcome challenges as they undertake every stage of a major project build from tender to project completion.
We then asked our cohort to gather outside for a special ceremony thanks to our friends at Marda Dandhi, who arranged for Elder Uncle Alvin Rajkovic-Atkinson from the Bunurong Land Council Aboriginal Corporation to perform a welcome to country and smoking ceremony.
As Alvin shared his story and provided us with an understanding of the importance of ceremony, it was a profound moment that fittingly welcomed our project and people to country.
MACA’s David Williams led the next session outlining the expectations we have regarding safety and safe working practices. This is always a vital session as, for many participants, a live site environment is still a new experience and utilising power tools, lifting equipment, and more can be prone to misadventure.
It was then time to divide the cohort into two teams, Else and Merle, issue the tender documentation and brief the teams on their objectives and milestones for their submission. From costing to schedule, each team's challenge over the next two days is to prepare their tender submissions, present them to a panel of industry experts, and hopefully win the contract to build the MACA Big Build Bridge.
Our lunch and learn gave an insight into the world of design and how, in a rapidly changing world, designers have to look to the future while designing to the expectations and standards of today. Thank you to WGA’s Zubaidah Ali for sharing her insights into her career, approach to design and her love and excitement for working with bridge structures. With questions from the cohort on everything from AI in design to predicting the future, it was a highly engaging and thought-provoking session.
After lunch, our teams got to work on their tender, pulling apart the RFT, asking questions of the client, examining the structure, location and materials, allocating roles, identifying critical tasks and more. Supported by MACA’s Arthur Hanna and the Constructionarium Australia Team, it was clear that they appreciated the scale of their challenge but were calmly, collectedly and logically approaching their task.
For our final session of the Day, Luke Read of Bentley joined us for a session on Synchro Perform. Utilised to track every aspect of build performance, Synchro will be vital to the success of the project in build week as it will be the key reporting tool for the team and be used to determine the project’s finances and, therefore success.
As day 1 wrapped up, it was great to be underway with our first day of the year.
Day two was all about getting on with preparing tender submissions. Constructionarium Australia’s Gary Parkinson started the day with an extremely useful session; How to Win a Tender. With Gary’s insights absorbed, the teams started working through their methodologies, material take-offs and more as they started to make progress ahead of today’s major deadline; 5:00 pm Early Deliverable – Procurement List. The clock was ticking.
Our lunch and learn focussed on Safety in Construction, with MRPV’s Sarah Krausas and MACA’s David Williams reiterating the importance of safety throughout every aspect of their program from tender to construction. Fundamentally our cohort will be working on a live site, and we want everyone, including site visitors, to be safe from injury and harm. Therefore, we cannot stress the importance of these sessions as we encourage our participants to take an active approach to safety at all times and to ensure that their safety methodologies and practices are fully incorporated into their tender.
With the clock ticking, it was back to the tender grindstone as questions were asked, answers received, assumptions changed, calculations recalculated, methodologies adjusted and more. But as the deadline approached, both teams achieved their first milestone.
Two days down, but there will be no let up in pace as Friday means tender submission, client presentation and, hopefully, a winning bid to build the Big Build Bridge.
Thanks again to the team at Bentley for being on hand to support the team throughout the day.
