Plumbing Africa January 2020 | Page 35

PROJECT 33 expert and will advise on plans, Solomon says for a job of this magnitude you have to have the professional wet services engineers on board for peace of mind to work out quantities, sizes of materials, system layout on a drawings and provide a comprehensive report. This spells out how they arrive at calculations and why it is the way it is. The drawings will specify the pipe and valve sizes but leave the actual purchase and transport of them to site to the plumber. Scope of work Solomon says: “Our job as plumbers was the pipework connections into the tank and the pipework out of the tank, as well as to and from the pumphouse – the booster pumps and the pressure vessel – and everything leading from the pumphouse towards Gallagher Estate, connecting to a water line which was installed by the civils company. Graham Solomon, owner of plumbing contractor Goldmark Plumbing. “It’s actually a fairly straightforward process – the major difference is in the industrial size of the water tank.” The tank itself is located at the far end of the open-grounds parking field, several hundred metres from the entrance to Gallagher, which Solomon describes as the closest piece of available ground. “One of the main construction challenges was that the foundation for the tank had to be robust enough to carry the considerable weight of the water tank at about 1 000t with all the rebar involved. It’s daunting.” That was constructed by Lutalo Construction Projects, as was the pumphouse. “Once the installation is done, we will be presenting water saving options to Gallagher, hoping to ensure the mixers come with water-saving aerators and the toilets have half-flush – once the water reservoir is up and running.” Scheduling woes Goldmark has both a maintenance (commercial, residential and industrial) and construction divisions, and has been in existence over 15 years. “We do everything from a leaking tap washer in a house, up to urban upgrade of a 144-unit apartment block.” The combination of maintenance and construction assists in scheduling and flexibility in moving teams between small and large jobs. The tank, water vessel and pump were all supplied by the client rather than Goldmark. The plumbing works was anticipated to be complete by November. The project has taken a year, but Solomon explains there were substantial periods of inaction in between, as primarily the tank was prefabricated. One of the challenges was consequently to manage a fitful workflow with other projects. “Each sub-contractor gets called in by the project manager according to its schedule. For instance, the schedule provided that the water tank was to be full for the Comic Con. We fell behind schedule when we had to drill under the road to avoid damaging utility services – such as stormwater and fibre, Eskom and Telkom cables – which introduced a complication. The client did January 2020 Volume 25 I Number 11 While still a work in progress, this is the tank adjacent to the pumphouse. “In 22 years of being in the business it’s the first time we’re doing a water storage system of this scale.” radar mapping to determine what was below the road, and contractors had to drill 2.4m below the road surface to miss all the services. “The delay is the reason we had to do a temporary connection to at least survive Comic Con. That was done, and the coming months will be focused on setting the system up on a permanent basis,” says Solomon. PA www.plumbingafrica.co.za