The Civil Engineering Contractor July 2019

BUSINESS INTEL Mount Edgecombe Drive in Durban again. If suppliers are present on site, it makes it easier to repair. That is the whole logic behind these agreements. People must get access to plant and get the technical support that comes with it and also the enabling mechanism to secure finance,” he says. Another MoU has recently been signed with the National African Federation of Building Industries (NAFBi) to provide mentors to enable small contractors with basics like tender documentation and quoting. They are looking at similarly transforming other sub-sectors like asphalt, auditing, finance, communications, marketing, human capital development, security and landscaping. Through engaging with big players in the industry, SANRAL has found that many of them have the mindset that they are just suppliers. “But we’ve demonstrated through the transformation policy that they can be enablers to assist small players to participate. Some people look at it narrowly, seeing it as ‘market share theft’. Frankly, you grow the market and allow people to play, you don’t grow the market by shutting people out. Additionally, experience has shown in this country that most of the disruptions on sites are led by lower graded companies because www.civilsonline.co.za they are frustrated by big corporates shutting them out. We progressively have to work with them. The strength of the policy will lie in partnerships we secure,” says Macozoma. Another SANRAL transformation initiative is the Technical Excellence Academy established in Port Elizabeth. Eighteen new engineering candidates enrolled for 2019, and 50 graduates have finished their training at the academy since 2014. “The academy is training engineers from the time they are graduates through to full registration as professional engineers. It’s exciting stuff: you’re generating capacity that the industry needs. Because often when arguing for industry transformation, we’re told there aren’t enough professional engineers, particularly black engineers. So, we’re training them and getting them to register. We decided strategically that we will supply the market — not only SANRAL,” he says. Merging technology with engineering There’s been much hype about the fourth industrial revolution. Macozoma is adamant that roads can be part of it through the way they are managed after completion. “We’re moving into an era of driverless cars, electric cars, very futuristic mobility technologies coming in, so there’s a lot of research and innovation we do which we implement and apply in the road network system.” One of the sub-sectors found in the transformation policy includes transforming operations like toll roads and developing intelligent transport systems. “We see a lot of opportunity in using technology to improve safety performance. On the other hand, e-tolls are a good example of how convergence has happened to make performance of road infrastructure much better,” he says. One such example is the deployment of heat sensor technology that is able to determine when someone is entering, exiting or is on a bridge. This follows remarks from pedestrians who opted to use the road to cross instead of the bridge, stating that it was unsafe. According to Macozoma, close to 13 000 people lose their lives on South Africa’s roads each year and SANRAL has taken steps to raise road safety awareness in communities it operates in. “We’ve made a commitment that for every national road we do, there will be a community development project attached to it. Community development CEC July 2019 | 35

The Civil Engineering Contractor July 2019 | Page 37