At McNicholas my function as a planner was to be involved with the project from pre –tender stage right through to six monthly / two yearly defect hand over stage.
The biggest and highest valued project was a telecommunications link for a company called Tycom Networks, the project was valued at £300,000,000.00 as it had submarine cables linking it to America, Canada and Norway and my duties included:
•Plan a feasible route from Filey North Yorkshire, down to Cambridgeshire & across to Leeds.
•Walk the routes in their entirety to position splice chambers & pulling boxes.
•Made a schedule of surfaces that would be excavated.
•Organized opening notices with the local councils for the roads that work would take place.
•Requested locations to be marked for utilities (Gas, Water, Electric & BT) & drawings.
•Did straight line drawings and red line drawings for the work gangs to use.
•Supervised trial holes on every Special Engineering Difficulty on the route (i.e. bridges, culverts & other structures that need extra attention before excavating)
•Wrote method statements for the local council’s approval.
•Liaised with Councils, Environmental Agency, English Heritage, Project Managers, Planning Managers and Site Engineers to make sure everyone was updated on the progress of the route.
•Kept records of all work that was done and any amendments that were made I ensure they were distributed to the relevant people.
I also did many other duties on this project like the archiving of files etc.
•I also did a few other projects, including feasibility studies for jobs ranging from Central London to Heathrow airport, a route on the outskirts of London, a loop around Leeds and Bradford and a connecting route from Wiltshire border to the Hampshire border with values between £1,000,000 to 20,000,000.