NEWSWORTHY
MBA NORTH BESTOWS HONORARY LIFE MEMBERSHIP ON FLOORING DOYEN
Neil Duncan, a respected leader in the South African flooring and building industry, has been awarded Honorary Life Membership by Master Builders Association( MBA) North. Duncan, currently Director and formerly Chief Financial Officer of KBAC Flooring, is among the pioneers of training in the flooring sector, having successfully implemented an internal training programme at KBAC Flooring – an initiative which has already resulted in 30 KBAC flooring installers acquiring SAQA / CETAaccredited qualifications. He has also been instrumental in the establishment of the Flooring Industry Training Association( FITA) which registers, accredits and provides training of flooring installers nationally, and serves as one of FITA’ s directors. Apart from his involvement in the flooring industry, Duncan has also played voluntary and key roles in the building industry overall over the past 44 years. A qualified Chartered Accountant, he has, for example, served as Trustee and Principal Officer of the Gauteng Building Industry Pension and Provident Fund, Honorary Treasurer of MBA North, Executive Committee Member of MBA North, and President of MBA North in 2006 and 2007.
Neil Duncan( right), director of KBAC Flooring, receives the Honorary Life Membership bestowed on him by MBA North from the Association’ s president, Jason Wilmot.
GEOSYNTHETIC SOLUTION FOR ROAD CONSTRUCTION
Fibertex geosynthetic solutions for road construction and maintenance includes Fibertex AM-2, a flexible needle punched pre-compressed nonwoven fabric, with added thermal bonding on one side. This product, which is highly durable and resistant to all natural soil alkalis and acids, is used to avoid reflective cracking of new asphalt and to protect subsoil from water intrusion and thereby loss of bearing capacity.
“ The purpose of this pre-compressed Polypropylene( PP) bitumen-saturated paving fabric, is to prevent the ingress of surface water into the selected layers of the road prism, reducing the bearing capacity of these layers,” says Lionel Kistan, export sales manager, Fibertex South Africa – manufacturers of geosynthetic products.“ This membrane also act as a Stress Absorbing Membrane Interlayer( SAMI) to prevent surface stress cracking by absorbing stresses imposed by differential loads. Fibertex AM-2 also prevents the propagation of stress cracks from lower surface layers( older asphalt or chip seal layers) in the case of a road re-seal.
“ Additionally, when using Fibertex F-grade geotextiles in a separation application below the layer works of the road prism, the road design can be altered to include less of the costly imported engineered fill. This reduces the thickness of the selected layers, resulting in a more cost effective design. Without the use of a separation fabric in weak subgrade conditions, intermixing of engineered aggregate into the weak subgrade could occur. As a result, the bearing capacity of the base course is reduced, which could lead to base course failure of the road.
“ Fibertex UV stabilised virgin PP geotextiles are the only nonwoven geotextiles produced in Africa with certification for durability of over 100 years, in accordance with the latest EN standards.”
By using virgin PP Fibertex AM-2 in road construction and maintenance projects, substantial infrastructural cost reductions are achieved.
Virgin PP geotextiles, with a high level of chemical stability under a wide range of environmental conditions, have advantages in installations where the cost of failure may be extreme, in both financial and environmental terms.
The Fibertex AM-2 system can be applied mechanically for large volume installations, as well as manually in cases where narrow width installations are required. Email: lmk @ fibertex. com | Web: www. fibertex. com
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