The Civil Engineering Contractor June 2018 | Page 15

ON SITE
L
ocated on the corner of Oxford and
Chaplin roads in Illovo, is a huge hole
in the ground, dropping 13 metres to
what is destined to be the floor of the fourth
parking basement of an office block.
The construction site is for the 96
Illovo office development, commissioned
by client Victhyme Investments.
Dev Devan, project manager at 3D
Projects, describes what the development
comprises: “The project involves the
development of a 7 500 square metre
A-grade office block, consisting of four
levels of basement and ground, plus three
levels of offices. The size of the plot is 3 500
square metres in an extremely tight site.”
The site, like all the other new
developments underway in the built-
up area, is struggling with a confined
working space. “One of the challenges in
managing this job is the logistics created
by having a site that is bound by Oxford
and Chaplin roads, as well as the close
proximity of a built-up property next
door,” Devan explains.
Presently underway, but nearing an
end, are the bulk earthworks, which
are being completed by Harrogate
Civil Construction. Pregan Moonsamy,
contracts manager at Harrogate, describes
the scope of work: “To get to the depth
we have, which is 13 metres from ground
level, we excavated about 40 000 cubic
metres of earth, in about two-and-a-half
months,” he explains.
Looking around the site, in overcast
weather, there are large puddles of
water, evidence of the recent storms that
battered Gauteng. Moonsamy assures,
however, that this has not delayed the
project to any degree: “Other than a
minor delay around an issue over an
existing stormwater pipe, the earthworks
are on schedule because the underfoot
conditions are good for excavation, as
the earth is soft to about seven metres in
depth,” he adds.
CEC
CEC June
May 2018 - 13