Morning all,
Our second concrete mixer turned up today along with another plate compactor as promised. We also got 4 more guys with the remaining 6 I asked for coming tomorrow.
Pad and strip reinforcing is going in as we speak, and we’ve got our pre-pour inspections (by the national lab and our controller) scheduled for tomorrow afternoon with concrete commencing either tomorrow or Thursday morning.
The police have been given a shake up too. Sitting under trees asleep, playing cards, drinking tea is not what we’ve engaged them for so today, they are back to their positions around the site and are also patrolling. It won’t last of course so we’ll have to give them another shakeup in a week’s time.
We had a visit from the ministries this morning as well- the finance guy from animal affairs ministry and the guy from urban. This seemed to go well though they are a little frustrated with no concrete being down yet.
We are being very careful about what we tell them as they get one idea in their minds and it’s very hard to change it.
After the ministry had left, we were asked to email plans of structure, foundations and the geotech report to BA2C. This was the firm who were going to be our controller but when we told the client that it wouldn’t be money well spent they were dropped and others were appointed who were not only much cheaper but who have been quite helpful to us. Not sure it there’s going to be another controller on site but it could be interesting.
They seem to be quite keen on bureaucracy here, with all manner of unnecessary red tape and regulations to get through, most of which seems to only have the purpose of extracting money from the project.
Or perhaps I’m being a little cynical...
The project has been on TV on a couple of occasions and attracts quite a bit of interest as we thought it would. We get a number of people coming to the site offering their services for all sorts of things but mainly as builders. Generally they turn out to not be builders at all so I like to go and see work they’ve done before talking to them much more. I went to an EU funded site this morning which is being built by someone we’ve asked to price the accommodation blocks and will talk to about the admin building.
This is a 4 storey admin building next to the Palais de Justice (law courts)
See attached for some photos of the site.
I watched the guys doing the concreting in exactly the same way they were doing it on the video David K sent round a while back.
In lieu of a crane with a bucket, this works pretty well and obviously doesn’t cost too much.
The scaffolding is also a thing of beauty. Looks more like a South American rainforest than a site. I won’t say I was entirely comfortable walking under but it seemed to do the job.
As you can see, health and safety is not even considered here.
The rest of the photos of this building will be on the shared drive the next time I’ve synchronised under construction photos/enterprise wali issoufou.
That’s all for now,
Me
