Royal Palm Estates - interesting engineering challenges
The enormous size of the Royal Palm Estates development has provided some interesting engineering challenges.
With some 3 500 residential opportunities spread over 355 hectares, and an office park and corporate park of 87 hectares
and 210 hectares respectively, the demand for bulk engineering infrastructure services equates to that of a small town.
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n an area devoid of bulk engineering services, Stemele Bosch Africa
assisted Royal Palm Property Holdings (RPPH, the Developer) to plan the
provision of bulk engineering services for the development in conjunction
with the service providers in the area.
A noteworthy aspect of the development is the vision of RPPH to providing
first class landscaping to all areas of the development. This has required
Stemele Bosch Africa to design and implement a comprehensive phased
irrigation system feeding all sites and common areas.
This included a water supply system fed off reservoirs of an ultimate capacity
of 13,2 Ml, a 2 Ml/day sewage treatment works as an interim measure to
serve the development until a new regional works is constructed, various
pumpstations, upgrading of a provincial road to 4-lanes, and upgrades to
the national road interchange. All elements were planned at a township
approval stage (utilising the Development Facilitation Act) and included
negotiated services agreements with the service providers. Other aspects
of the planning stage were the determining of 1:100 year floodlines and
input into the EIA processes.
This included hydrological assessments of the irrigation raw water supply,
design and implementation of both storage and aesthetic dams, and
pumpstations for the pressurised system.
The phased implementation necessitated by the size of the development
also required careful planning of the implementation of the bulk services.
Aside from the bulk services, Stemele Bosch Africa’s brief also included
all the water and irrigation reticulation planning, sewer outfall mains, and
all internal services and earthworks to the Forest Office Park as well as
approximately half of the residential areas.
Construction of the first phase of the bulk services installation is complete,
along with Phase 1 of the residential component.
Contact Cary Kroeger – [email protected]
Training for graduate engineers
The Bosch Projects in-house training programme for graduate engineers which was introduced over two years
ago, has now been certified by the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA).
“This professionally approved training programme is designed to develop graduate engineering students to become competent engineers within
our organisation,” says Mike Gibbon, managing director of Bosch Projects. “Certification from ECSA, which covers mechanical, electrical and
civil engineering, warrants that Bosch Projects gives its commitment and undertaking to ensure each training module meets specified standards.”
Sean Hulley, Meethan Gokool and Sherwin Jairam (back row) – three EIT’s who joined Bosch Projects in
January 2006 – have now completed the second year of their three year training programme. Here they are
at a mini conference held recently at Kaya Lembali, where they displayed their work experiences.
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