Plant Equipment and Hire April 2019 | Page 28

ON SITE Moretele. On the way, we will tie into various existing pipelines in order to increase the supply.” Excavation M&D has built up a plant division that caters to all construction divisions within the group. They have a range of machines, which includes Komatsu. Large side booms are specific to the pipe laying industry. From left: Thomas Zikhali, machine operator; John Mkwane, M&D Construction operator manager; and Rowan Barnard, M&D Construction plant manager. Thomas Zikhali has 35 years’ experience as a machine operator. 26 APRIL 2019 Rowan Barnard, head of plant at M&D Construction, explains that the size of the trenches for the pipe diameter, and the design metreage per day quota, necessitates the use of excavators. M&D has built up a plant division that caters to all construction divisions within the group. The company considered it strategically necessary to own sufficient plant to both increase the competitiveness of the various divisions and to ensure an accessible pool of plant to satisfy site needs and requirements. Certain plant items such as large side booms are specific to the pipe laying industry, but most of the plant owned can be used in general building, earth moving, as well as civil engineering projects. The company constantly upgrades and renews its plant fleet to increase its production output. “When our plant is not being utilised by the group, it is available for hire to the open market, for selected clients. Items of plant owned include excavators, rollers, front-end loaders, tipper trucks, water trucks, side boom pipe layers, tower cranes, concrete mixing trucks, TLBs, screens, graders, dozers, and mobile cranes — all handled by our plant division,” says Barnard. “Equipment we use are majority CAT machines, but we have some Komatsu machines as well. Our tower cranes are Potain and mobile cranes are Terex and Tondano.” Plant equipment is only as good as its operators, and Barnard says that the equipment operators have different skill levels — some operators are accustomed to pipeline excavation, while others are accustomed to bulk excavation. “Pipeline excavation is specialised work; the excavators work in built-up areas, often with little space, and trenches need to be base-even for the laying of the pipes. We tend to put our more skilled and experienced operators on pipeline excavation,” he says. “When it comes to training our operators, we find that what works best is to send younger operators to work with our more experienced and skilled operators, in order to further develop required skills on site. The best training comes from practical, physical learning,” Barnard believes. One of the operators, Thomas Zikhali, has been operating excavation equipment and bulk-handling machinery for 35 years. “Thomas is highly skilled at what he does www.plantonline.co.za