Two
different sources have confirmed to this Blogger that a major management
screw-up, in late December, will almost certainly
delay the start of the next phase of the project and Project Completion.
The
Christmas revelry seems to have caused Nalcor management to forget about a
critical pumping system essential to maintaining the construction schedule.
All last
year, huge equipment performed mass excavation to remove six million cubic
meters of rock, according to Nalcor figures, creating a giant hole where the
power house and spillways of the dam will be built.
Large pumps
had been installed to keep the “giant hole” dry in anticipation of Astaldi’s
arrival at the Project. Astaldi Canada
is the Italian Contractor awarded the $1 billion contract to build the
powerhouse, intake, gated spillway and transition structures.
The site is situated within mere meters of the Churchill River. Fissures in the rock permit river water to penetrate the formation, as it might any unmaintained excavated pit. Snow melt and rain water help fill it, too. Temperatures in the Happy Valley region, during Christmas, fell into the -30° or lower range.
The site is situated within mere meters of the Churchill River. Fissures in the rock permit river water to penetrate the formation, as it might any unmaintained excavated pit. Snow melt and rain water help fill it, too. Temperatures in the Happy Valley region, during Christmas, fell into the -30° or lower range.
When the
workforce temporally abandoned the site for the Holidays, it seems no one was
put in charge of keeping the pumps running which are needed to keep the excavation from filling
with water.
What happened?
Following a
major snow fall, the road to the construction site did not get plowed.
The re-supply truck was unable to reach the site to deliver fuel oil. The water pumps are gas driven. Nalcor did not have an emergency supply of fuel on
site.
So the pumps
failed.
That’s what
happens when unqualified people get to run big projects.
Nalcor’s
giant, partly water-filled, crater has turned to ice. Now penetrating the cracks in the rock , the
ice is virtually impossible to mechanically remove. Melting is the only real solution to the
problem.
Nalcor made
no announcement about this management “oversight” or what it all means for the
project . But, Astaldi is sure to suffer
delay in placing the estimated 500,000 cubic metres of concrete required for
the structures.
Spring does
not come early to Labrador.
Nalcor ought
to make a full report on such a critical operational failure; it must also inform
the public how much delay it represents for the Muskrat Falls Project.
One thing is
clear. Such a basic oversight again calls into
question the most fundamental management skills of Nalcor, as Project Managers. If management is not strong enough to ensure
simple procedures are in place to plough a road, arrange fuel delivery and keep
vital pumping operations going 24 hours per day, it has no business pretending
it has the management skills to bring a large mega-project to fruition on time
and on budget.
Sources
close to the Project state that Nalcor has lacked a senior Manager right from the
beginning; one skilled and experienced in large-scale construction management, located
on the Site, not in St. John’s. That
Project Manager must be capable of dealing with bureaucrats at Nalcor who want
to operate from St. John’s.
He/she must
possess not just the skillset to knowledgeably execute on essential
logistics. That person must have the authority to
take fundamental operational decisions.
But a new
project manager would not be not nearly enough even assuming that Muskrat can
be justified.
Nalcor needs
a full clean out of its executive offices. Corporate Bureaucrats and a plethora
of managers with oil industry experience don’t fit the bill on a mega-construction
project up in Labrador.
The cash
register rings on Muskrat’s cost over-runs.
This is
certainly not good news from the field.