Home Sweet Bundamba

Post by TTM.
Back in May 2006 when I arrived to work on the Dublin project it was to a site that had officially demobilized. Our offices were a well-worn double-decker construction trailer and a year later we moved out of the trailer and into a 225-year old stone hotel. Both accommodations were workable but fairly spartan, but they did the job with our small staff.

Arriving in Brisbane to get started at the Bundamba project, I found a much different scene. This site has had 500+ people at once working on it at many points, so the facilities were scaled to match.

Here is a view of some of the trailers from the carpark. This was taken in the evening after most of the trades had left. Tradesmen generally start work at 6AM on this site, so the commissioning staff (including me) usually ends up with the way-out-there parking spots when we arrive shortly before 7AM. These trailers extend in several rows away from the camera and to the left. This is a view down the corridor between the "cribs", or break rooms. There are a lot of them, because when 300+ hungry construction guys emerge from the site for their morning "smoko", it takes a lot of space to hold them all. Most of the corridors between the trailers are covered to keep the sun out. Notice the potted palms. The joint venture went to a good amount of effort to make the site offices and break room a comfortable place, and that includes palm trees, legitimate sidewalks, running-water toilets, air conditioning, a site canteen, etc. This is a photo of the inside of the trailer where I have my "office". My desk is on the left hand wall to the right of the person in the orange shirt. B&V staff have two computers: the B&V laptop and a joint-venture computer. Everyone has two screens on their desk, and two mice, and two keyboards.... And two email accounts - ugh.Here I am at my desk! (This really is work, I haven't been incarcerated for something) The spiffy orange shirt is part of the site uniform. In Dublin we wore fluorescent green jackets and vests; here we wear blaze orange shirts with stripes.
Here I am in more of my safety gear. The yellow hat indicates that I am part of the Commissioning team. Construction wears white hats, safety/first aid gets green, and visitors get blue. Pretty handy to know what people do at a glance. The dark glasses are because it can get really bright outside; everyone issued with a dark pair and a regular clear pair. If you look closely at my shirt you will see an interesting feature: my name. Yup, after most of a decade of professional employment, I am now at the point where I get to wear a shirt with my name embroidered on it to work. Jokes aside, this is also a nice idea; it helps you keep track of who is who and recall their name. Imagine facing several hundred men in orange stripey shirts, hardhats and dark glasses, and trying to be sure not to call yell "Don" when the guy's name is really "Mike".

The project is really going well. Our project (the Bundamba Advanced Water Treatment Plant) is part of the Western Corridor Recycled Water Project; a massive project in southeast Queensland to provide additional treatment to already-treated wastewater so that it can be used as part of Brisbane's water supply. Bundamba is the first part of the project that will be completed, and one of the largest parts. I am the SCADA (computer control system) commissioning leader for the second half of the project, and as such I am responsible to make sure that all of the computer controls are developed and work correctly to provide mostly-automatic control of the water plant.

If you want to take a look at the overall WCRWP, try this link: http://www.westerncorridor.com.au/ Click around and anything you see related to Bundamba or Bundamba Alliance is part of our project.