Who is ensuring what’s done at each stage is (1 ) in the right place, (2) to a...

Hi Fred, By ‘Poly Rock’ I assume you mean blocks of polystyrene under the concrete slab, in place of soil or crushed stone etc. Used quite commonly here, even on major civil contracts. No problem in principle. Regarding whether your ‘Slab Manager’ never appearing on Site is typical I don’t know, but it sounds a bit odd. I assume you must be watching the Site constantly enough to know he/she never slips round for a quick look on the way home. If you’re sure on that, and he/she’s your ‘point of contact’ why not give him/her a call, or call the company. If I were building I’d expect some kind of contact and feedback on progress from the builder, at least every week or two. Before doing that I suggest you check at what stages the work is supposed to be inspected and signed off by Council. From you reference to the engineer looking at, and requiring remedial work, on the earthworks obviously someone is keeping some kind of eye on things. But bear in mind that up now it’s possible that most of the work done (other than the earthworks you mentioned) is not ‘covered’ work, by which I mean it has not been covered by other work, so it can no longer be inspected. Perhaps the Slab Manager and Council will appear just in time to check stuff that’s about to be covered up.

Hi Chris, My reference to Poly Rock is a specialised lightweight fill used instead of hard fill for heights above 600mm fill height. This was specifically required by the engineers and isn’t the white polystyrene blocks used as part of the slab. In terms of the project manager for this stage not being on site, we know this because he has tle me that he’s not been on site. Strangely the day I questioned who was keeping an eye on the various trades and the quality of their work, he phoned my the next morning from the site!!!!