The Civil Engineering Contractor May 2019 | Page 28

FEATURE: PILING AND LATERAL SUPPORT
Drilling rigs come in different sizes - little, larger and large.
Bauer piling rigs can drill through
anything with the appropriate rotary
or percussion head and tooling. We
are able to offer our clients the ‘most
cost-effective and innovative solution
for piling or lateral support’.”
Other brands still make sales
based on price and the quality of
long relationships. “You know the
equipment and how it works, you
know the people — a relationship
develops and you stick with it.” As a
relative newcomer, MegaPile Inland
never had that legacy situation: it
chose Bauer from the beginning. The
company has since stuck with Bauer
— “for good reason”, says Whittaker.
He explains that with his previous
company, they had used home-made
equipment that was “not mechanically
sound or safe”.
“It did the job, but you can do it
a whole lot better and faster with
a Bauer,” which is also specced to
stringent European equipment and
safety standards. The local market for
equipment is not as highly regulated,
he adds. A 60t Bauer can be remotely
26 | CEC May 2019
controlled in unsafe conditions, for
instance. “We have had this done;
they have all the drawings in German
and commission a local technician to
come out and supervise — or even a
Germany-based technician.”
That is for piling, and Whittaker
explains that they use a broader range
of brands for lateral support, as each
brand tends to have a best-of-breed,
and Megapile Inland cherry-picks
each of these. It has Furakawa, for
instance, as well as Casagrande and
Comacchio. This equipment tends to
be smaller and is applicable to mining
as much as lateral support. “Each one
specialises in a slightly different way:
you may need an extremely small rig
for limited access; another one that’s
sturdier, for instance.”
One of those ‘early pioneers’
of piling is Nico Maas, CEO of
Gauteng’s second-largest piling
company, Gauteng Piling, a firm that
has 16 large auger piling machines.
Maas says his firm has opted not
to specialise in a single make of
equipment. It has a variety of hydraulic
and non-hydraulic machines either
on wheels or on tracks, including
Williams diggers, MT diggers,
Casagrande, and Soilmecs. “We like
what we have in terms of the specs
and we still compete very well in all
circumstances.”
Piles of work?
MegaPile Inland is involved in the
R10-billion five-year Mercedes
Benz refurbishment and expansion
of its plant in East London. This is
a complex project that is not for
the faint-hearted, with R150 000/
day penalties for late delivery, says
Whittaker. The investment will be
used to build a new paint shop and
a new body shop and to upgrade
the assembly shop and new logistics
warehouses. The refurbishment
will enable the car manufacturer
to produce the next generation of
C-Class vehicles at the East London
plant.
“It is tremendously pressurised,
employing contractors who work
during the year-end shutdown period
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