The Civil Engineering Contractor July 2019 | Page 18

ON SITE
A panoramic view of the site, overlooked at SABC’s Auckland Park campus.
the job from sitting in an office. The
guys I have who ‘get out there’ are
able to operate all our equipment.”
Overview of
challenges
project
Both Khune-Con and Lapalaka are
family-owned businesses (Wick works
with his father Erhardt, a qualified
quantity surveyor who does the QS
component of the project). They
frequently do JVs on such projects
in the area, as well as in Pretoria.
They are consequently well known to
each other with high levels of trust.
Burger says his company prefers to
work within trusted relationships and
seldom tenders for work.
As the main contractor, Khune-Con
was responsible for the demolition,
civils work and construction to key
handover, explains Burger, as well
as external work on roads and
pavements. The full civils work used
650m 3 of concrete for the ground
beams and 27.5t of steel, and 2 500m 3
of soil replacement was removed at a
cost of R150/m 3 . The full quantities
had not as yet been quantified for the
entire structure.
“First we build all the retaining
walls around the site to create the
platform by doing 150mm layer
16 | CEC July 2019
compactions up to 93% modified
Aashto specification. From there we
pile to the exact top of pile height,
from where we dig our ground beams
on top of the piles and from there we
build the structure.
“The main challenge with a project
of this nature is time. Developers
need to be complete on a previous
project and ready-to-go before they
get the go-ahead on a new one. This is
because students sign in mid-February
to end-February, and the project has
to be complete by then. We therefore
start demolitions on the next project
in March, which means we have eight
months in total to execute. In fact, on
the previous project we had only six
and a half months, and it was a bigger
project than this. If we don’t make
it in time … you can’t ask students
to move in during July. When you
miss a deadline, you miss a year.
In terms of penalties, if we’re late
a week it can cost the developer a
year, so how do you cost that?” It can
potentially liquidate a developer that’s
not sufficiently financially strong.
That explains the need for trusted
relationships.
“On some projects I run two nine-
hour shifts for months on end to
meet the deadline — but it won’t be
necessary on this one. This requires
us to have all material delivered
on time and it consequently can’t
be dependent on availability of cash
flow. When we’re in full production
we get about six truck-loads of bricks
a day, and 12 truck-loads of dry-
mortar mixes because this can’t be
mixed by hand on site. The latter can
be stored in silos where we add water
to get, say, 10MP or such strength
as is required. It’s a class A mortar
mix we use. We use Echo precast
slabs, where we can, for the floors
and ceilings, but some areas require
massive spans which have to be done
in situ,” says Burger.
Early delivery in itself creates a
challenge with logistics because of
the built-up nature of the area: bricks
are palletised, shrink wrapped and
stacked up, with a 4X4 all-terrain
forklift telehandler capable of lifting
pallets as high as five floors. Double
handling of the dry mortar was
avoided by mixing it directly on the
slab, where water was added. “The
silos are consequently just a back-up
plan, and to mitigate against potential
delays in delivery — after all, we
cannot afford to stand idle.”
An administrative challenge at the
moment is lack of continuity from
local authorities. Burger explains
that because of a backlog in building
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