Basement - Foundation Progress

The contractor has been making steady progress on site. Today the final three pile caps (including the elevator pile cap casting) were completed in the half of the building with the basement.  A total of 89 of 109 pile caps have been completed to date. We anticipate that within the next week we will be completing the remaining pile caps. The remaining 6 short columns in the basement are ready to be cast tomorrow.  This will only leave the elevator shaft pit casting up to slab level. Compaction work has been ongoing in the basement area to prep the pad for a mud slab followed by steel tying and finally slab casting.

Elevator pile cap casting this morning

Short column casting formwork

Progress on the West wing

Backhoe assisting with backfill and compaction

Retaining wall along the edge of the slab at the West side of the building (Below grade)

Gas powered jumper compaction machine

Overall site progress

Jon

Continued Hartals (Boat Travel)

Unfortunately the countrywide hartals (road strikes) have been a steady fixture here in Bangladesh over the past month.  This makes travel and transport very difficult, which provides many challenges for maintaining a working construction site with all the required materials. Overall we have been pressing forward, with progress only being slightly hampered.

(Boat ride to Cox's on a hartal day)

With the strikes it means we have to occasionally go down to Cox's bazar by boat to pick up people who have flown in. This past week I went down with one of our doctors as a navigator/spotter to pick up his friend who came for a visit. It would be quite a shock for any newcomer as we docked the boat at the fish market, which is just across the street from the airport.  The smells and sights there can be very "interesting" on the best of days, but especially on hartals days very few customers, the fish just sit there quickly getting warm, smelly, slimy, attracting flies, etc....

(Docked at the fish market - boat next to us unloading some very large and bloated fish. I did bring my cooler to try to find some good fish, but nothing to tempt me on this day)

(Always a beautiful ride in the evening on the river)

On the construction site we have completed 62 of 109 pile caps along with an additional 30 of 60 basement short columns. Backfill and compaction work is ongoing in the basement area. The contractor is making consistent progress.

(Ongoing site work - East Wing)

(Ongoing site work - West Wing/Basement)

Foundation Pile Caps

The next phase of construction started in full the last week of October. We are now working on the pile caps and short columns up to the basement level. There is currently about 120 workers on site. We should get up to 150 workers on site in the next few days. These will be the full time workers. Once we start doing larger concrete pours (slab pours) the number of workers will quickly increase during those days. By the end of November we anticipate being able to start casting the basement slab.

(Site overview)

(Pilings are excavated down to a set level - All by manual labor)

(Dry season just started so the water table level is very high - feels like it is dropping at least a couple inches a day right now though)

(Pile head breaking down to the desired depth - A 3" thick concrete slab is poured prior to breaking to make a platform for breaking and setting up form work.)

(Pile Cap form and steel work)

(Pile Cap casting)

  

(Removing pile cap form work and installing the short column forms to the basement slab level)

(Remove water then back fill and compact around the pile caps)

(Evening work to make use of the cooler temperatures)

(Progress on the BBCB building - Second level is now completed up to the lintel height)

Jon

Nepal Vacation

It was great to get away on vacation for a number of days in Nepal. We spent 7 days trekking through the Annapurna sanctuary to Annapurna Base Camp (ABC), an amphitheater of stunning 7000 and 8000 m snow capped mountains.  We also enjoyed a few days of exploring the cities of Pokhara and Kathmandu, shopping, eating, visiting a waterwall/cave and paragliding (Jon).  We arrived back in Bangladesh during a multi-day hartal and tensions were high but we had no issues getting to Cox's Bazar and taking a sunset boat trip up river to Malumghat.  We have added photos of the trip that you can access by selecting gallery under the blog title or by clicking this link:  Nepal 2013 Gallery
The next phase of foundation work has begun  including pile head breaking, pile caps, and short columns.

Holly

Poon Hill - 3210 m

Dhaulagiri I (8167 m) ranked 7th highest in the world is hiding in clouds behind us

Breakfast in Ghorepani

Lovely blooms along the trail

Transporting materials to towns and tea houses

Night views from Sinuwa

Machapuchare ("Fish Tail" 6993 m) - Forbidden to summit due to religious reasons

Annapurna Base Camp to the left (4130 m)

Views of Annapurna peaks (Annapurna I - 8091 m)

Terraced fields

Morning sun in Pothana

Paragliding over Phewal Tal Lake in Pokhara

Durbar Square, Kathmandu

Monkey Temple, Kathmandu

Sunset boat ride to Malumghat

Fall 2013

After a very intense period of time on the hospital construction site completing the piles, work has slowed down over the past couple of weeks.  The contractor is now off for the second Eid holiday but will be returning near the end of the month to start work on the pile caps (first layout and pile head breaking).  We have been stockpiling materials on-site (various types of sand, stone, cement, steel, etc.), building additional housing for the construction workers, trying to catch up on paper work and working on final design details. John M.,  one of our American Architects, is here on his 5th trip to help to finalize some of those design details.  It has been good to get some additional architectural input and history.  Jon and John M. made a quick trip to Dhaka and Chittagong to meet with our national architects, engineers and the contractor to discuss implementing some value engineering changes.  I have added some related photos as well as other random shots from the past couple of weeks (warning: there is a good spider shot at the end).

Jon, John M, Dr. Kelley reviewing plans.

Trucks delivering 20 mm crushed stone.

Measuring the load quantities.

 An evening trip to Cox's Bazar to negotiate materials prices with our suppliers

 (sand and stone for concrete mixes).

Concrete Cylinder Compression Tests with our Workshop Welder, Sadek.

Boats in the Chittagong Harbor

Final Game of a District Women's Soccer Tournament in Cox's Bazar (a new discovery!)

 The final two teams were both from the Chittagong Hill Tracks.

MCH employee (hospital staff) annual soccer tournament

A local chicken (a bit more free range than the white farm chickens
 available).  This guy was not too happy about his coming fate of becoming dinner.

 Lots of new lambs on the compound.

 Caterpillar found in the vegetable gardens.

Very large spider caught a large cockroach on our veranda
(one of the reasons why we like spiders).

Holly

MCH Piling Work - Time-lapse Video

Time-lapse video of the piling works for the New Hospital Project. We have various webcams set up around the site to keep track of progress.

(music thanks to Orlendo Gomes)

Piling Progress - Completed (378 of 378)

Today the contractor finished the last pile for the foundation work (378 pilings complete). There is now over 90 metric tons of steel and 44,000 cubic feet of concrete in the ground to support the building. As we start to build upward the progress will start to be much more visible vs during the pilings only seeing the site get built up with sand and mud day by day. We will now have the building laid out again for the pile cap and short column work. We hope to get a good start on this work for the basement area prior to the next Eid holiday mid-October.

(Site Overview from the South - Last day all four crews were on site)

Jon

Surfing Cox's Bazar

This past week we made a lot of progress on finalizing the site design and grading with Chris. During his time here I found out that Chris likes to surf, so it felt like an opportune time to give it a go down at Cox's Bazar beach. Unfortunately none of the expats on campus had ever gone to Cox's to surf before so we were a bit in the dark as to where to find the equipment, or if it even was available to rent.  Undaunted we set off anyway with high hopes. As we neared Cox's (about a 45 minute drive south) we started to call some contacts we have made during our time here and eventually a number Holly was able to look-up got us in touch with some guys that surf and who said we could rent a couple boards from them for the morning.

(Down a small road, then an even narrower alleyway we found the "surf shop")

(A few boards on the wall of this guy's family's living room)

(Showing off some of his surf trophies) 

The waves were great for a beginner for me yet still fun for a regular surfer like Chris. I was told they were 3 foot waves, but to me when they are coming at us they were breaking well over our heads (wave height measured from the back side). Overall they were quite consistent with a few minute lul to catch our breath as the tide was changing.

(Jon and Chris Surfing Cox's Bazar)

(Walking back up the beach after some good waves with the one surfer we met out in the water.)

The shoreline is relatively straight and sandy for about 130 kms so there is a load of space, although it's not a problem as we only saw five other surfers on this Saturday morning over the 5 kms of the main cox's beach we could see.

(Jon heading in after a few hours of surfing)

(The Ocean was a few minutes drive from the shop so took our boards on the truck vs the cycle rickshaw they typically use)

We could have easily spent more time out on the water, but we also had to pickup John, our American Architect, from the Cox's airport and get back to Malumghat for a team meeting. From what I hear it sounds like September/October has the most consistent waves.  I'm always going to be looking for someone to surf with now whenever I can get away from the site. Hopefully we have some more short termers that are into it. We are still working on how Holly could do it without drowning in all the clothes she is suppose to wear.

Only 36 foundation piles remaining of 378 total (90% complete).

Jon