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More pictures can be found by clicking on the Work photos button. The National Sports Center was one of Brunei's largest development projects at the time. Phase 1, consisting of the Tennis and Swimming centers, Running track and football pitch, was completed in the early 1990s. Phase 2 consisted of the Indoor Stadium, Multipurpose Sports Hall, Squash and Hockey Centers, Games Village, the Berakas - Kebangsaan link road and an overbridge for the pedestrian walkway. It was intended to follow on from the first phase but political wrangling between the Ministries of Development and Finance brought the project to a temporary halt. I joined Cooper MacDonald Daud as Resident Engineer for phase 2, supervising a staff of one to four inspectors at various stages of the project. All structures are Reinforced Concrete framed. The Indoor Stadium had a Contactor designed space frame roof, all other structures had steel truss roofs fabricated on site. Because of the highly variable ground conditions all structures were founded on spun prestressed concrete piles, driven using diesel and hydraulic rigs. Technical challenges revolved mainly around the highly variable ground conditions, quality control for the Concrete works, and steel fabrication. More disruptive was the discovery on site of two small kubors or Muslim burial grounds. One was on the line of the Pedestrian walkway, the other on the line of the link road and both were on small hills above the general formation level. In both cases we realigned the highway in order to preserve the graveyards and tidied up the overgrown vedgetation. The greatest challenge was Contractual rather than technical. The Contractor for the Multipurpose Sports Hall was a trading organisation rather than an experienced builder. They had built the tennis center as part of a joint venture with a Japanese Contractor and had not come away with a good reputation. They were never the less apointed for the MPH against the advice of the design team. The Contract went badly from the start. The Contractor did not occupy the site for the first three months of the contract and thereafter only had a token presence. They were strongly rumoured to be trying to sell on the job. When a buyer did emerge it was again, not an experienced building company but a local quarry operator. Their first act was to damage 100 out of the 400 piles already installed while excavating for the pile caps. A long and protracted dispute ensued which unfortunately revolved around loss of face rather than technical issues. While we maintained friendly and cooperative relations on site the project was marred by repeated attempts by the Contactor (who had Royal connections) to have us removed from the job and indeed from the Country. The consolation for all this grief is that with so much attention focussed on this one project and with such tight supervision, the final quality was high. The other projects all concluded successfully without any Contractual hiccups. |
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