The Civil Engineering Contractor March 2019 | Page 34

PROFILE
Gugulethu Sidinile from SMEC.
Gugulethu Sidinile –
making a difference
A
By Ntsako Khosa
Very few people are
fortunate enough to find
their way and follow
it from an early age.
Gugulethu Sidinile, urban
development section
manager at SMEC, is one
of them. He talks to Civil
Engineering Contractor
about his career journey
and what lies ahead.
32 | CEC March 2019
s a civil engineer from the
University of Johannesburg,
Sidinile shares how from an early
age, he often was interested in the way
things worked. “When I looked at a road,
I would question why it is built in that
way and why the choice of the black tar
on top. I would wonder where the water
would go after a rainfall and why catch
pits were located in the areas where they
are. What sealed my vision of becoming
an engineer is when a close relative,
Thamsanqa Skele, pursued the path of
civil engineering. From seeing what he
was doing, I knew that I would like to
continue in the same vein,” he says.
Getting into the field fresh from
varsity, he was excited about getting
his hands dirty, moving from theory
to practice. Today, with about nine
years’ working experience, he has
worked on a number of projects. Few
remain memorable, as he says that each
project he has worked on provided
a lesson with challenges that were
overcome. Some projects he mentions
is the South African National Roads
Agency Limited (SANRAL) Gauteng
Freeway Infrastructure Project (GFIP)
on the N12 Freeway from the Jet
Park on-ramp to the Tom Jones exit. “I
started as a laboratory assistant, testing
aspects like soil sample properties,
cement properties, asphalt that came
in, and so on. Then I moved to the
role of technician, assisting the resident
engineer in supervising and signing off
works. The testing part of the project
helped me to know all tests required
in approving layers once I reached
engineer level, like in the Diepsloot
Roads Upgrade project,” he enlightens.
The Diepsloot project included the
upgrade of 27 gravel roads and he was
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