The Civil Engineering Contractor June 2019 | Page 35

trucks couldn’t reach the school.
People also had serious struggles to
access their homes and amenities
like clinics. When the project was
complete, you could drive the
distance in less than 10 minutes. I
will always remember that project
for the meaningful difference it made
in the lives of local people.
Recently we opened the Gateway
in the Umhlanga area. It is a majestic,
four-level interchange project, with
amazing routing and isolation of
traffic to promote and facilitate rapid
movement in a node in KwaZulu-
Natal that is growing at a fast pace.
The N2 Wild Coast is the last
remaining missing link in our key
corridors in the country. Completing
that section is going to open up the
corridor of the N2 from Ermelo,
Mpumalanga all the way to Cape
Town. Many people currently avoid
that route because of the Eastern
Cape’s steep inclines and rough
terrain. The new corridor has a much
flatter alignment and, being straighter,
will cut more than 100km from the
trip. It will create trade opportunities
between the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-
Natal and the Western Cape.
CEC: How has the industry
evolved since you entered it?
SK: South Africa has always played
along with the big boys. The
infrastructure we deliver shows that
we’ve got excellent engineering
capability. We deliver infrastructure
that is comparable to any in the world.
The e-toll scheme we’ve delivered,
for example, is an amazing piece of
infrastructure the potential of which
we haven’t even tapped. With e-tolls
we can solve many problems – we
can supply information to police
and SARS, for example. About 2.5
million vehicles go through our
highways every month providing data
we could offer to other authorities.
The resulting large amounts of data
can be used for planning purposes,
for advanced traffic management and
be put to good use to improve the
work of civil engineering.
www.civilsonline.co.za
PROFILE
SANRAL is one of the highest profile brands in South Africa.
Where we’ve experienced challenges
is in transforming the industry, as
well as welcoming young engineers
to take over from the older
generation of traditionally white
engineers, who are about to retire.
There’s a flood of young engineers
who need to be mentored and
routed through the hoops to become
professional engineers. Between
these two demographics there’s a
big gap that’s being filled by foreign
multinationals, which taken have over
local consulting firms. Local industry
capability to head up a project is
hard to find. Many large South
African construction companies
are struggling or in liquidation in
the current economic environment
as our industry is consequently
being decimated. When the cycle
turns, there is a risk we may not
have construction capability and
multinationals will have to step in.
We’re working with the industry to
see how it can be rescued.
On the other hand, black players are
complaining they don’t have access to
work. Sadly, there’s a proliferation of
grade 1s and 2s, which isn’t helpful
because at grade 8 and 9 you have
a small number. Emerging small
businesses are not sustainable on their
own to tender for big jobs: they need
to come together.
CEC: What is your message
to new civil engineering
graduates?
SK: It’s about motivating and
inspiring young ones coming up,
the ability to have bravery to chase
objectives that they might otherwise
run from, but which helps you to
aim higher. My message is: be clear
about where you want to end up;
be clear about your journey and
chase it and hound people and learn.
Don’t be afraid to ask questions.
The most important thing is share
what you know, because if you share
people get comfortable with you and
reciprocate. nn
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