Tells us about your first introduction in Construction before you decided to embark on a career in the industry
In 1972 when I should have been studying for my matric final exams, but the civil Engineering contractors had just started work on the M1 highway just below my parents’ house in Corlett Drive Bramley. Before they could start constructing the new highway, they needed to divert the existing river into a concrete canal so they could build the road where the river used to flow.Most afternoons for a few hours I would stand on the existing bridge over the Sandspruit and watch the progress. The contractors had a big O&K excavator with a rock bucket that would rip out the loose stones between the solid rock making white puffs of dust as it ripped over the solid rock. The loose material would be loaded onto tipper trucks and driven away. There was constant activity as the initial loose material needed to be dug away until solid rock was encountered, a haul road needed to be constructed for the tipper trucks to get access, a team of labourers needed to clear out the area by using picks and shovels, a drilling & blasting crew would also be drilling & blasting the high spots and then after blasting the whole process would start again.
Once the rock was at the right level then mixer trucks would come in and place mass concrete to get the floor to the correct level for the floor of the canal. Then more workers would arrive with shutters and reinforcing, shutter and fix reinforcing then pour concrete. I was fascinated by this constant activity and progress. How did you decide on a career in Construction?
After I had finished school, I had to spend a year in the army doing my National Service. While in the army I needed to decide on what I was going to do once I had finished with the army. Like a lot of young people, I had no idea and a limited idea of what my options were and what they entailed. But I was going to have to learn fast and decide.
I had considered several options like banking, computers, apprenticeships but the most appealing was the limited exposure that I had to civil engineering on the M1 at Corlett Drive.
My father had a few friends in the construction industry, and he arranged meetings for me with them. They helped me clarify the different options that there were available in the construction industry.
I had found out that the Technicon offered a diploma in civil engineering on a study block basis where you would study at Technicon for 6 months and then work on site or at the office for 6 months and you would also get `paid` while you studied. There was a lot of construction work going on at the time and quite a few newspaper advertisements looking for young people to start a career in civil engineering. I applied and had been for interviews and been offered 2 jobs and I accepted a job with Grinaker North. The only disadvantage was that I need to work for them for a year before they would send me to college. They had had too many people drop out of the course once they had experienced site life. I should have been warned.
Tell us about your first site experience?
About 8 of us technicians started with a 3-week survey course run by an experienced surveyor at the training centre at Grinakers Elandsfontein office. We covered the basics of engineering survey, using a dumpy level, did level surveys all over the training centre, learnt how to use a survey book, setting up a theodolite, basic tacky surveys.
After graduating from our survey course, we were all sent off to different Grinaker sites all over the country. I was sent to Waterval Boven and the others to road jobs in the Transkei, roads at Gamtoos river mouth in the E Cape and some stayed at HO in Johannesburg. I needed to go home and find a map so I could find out where Waterval Boven was as I had never been to the Eastern Transvaal.
One of my first real survey jobs I had to do on site was to put in levels fors for the tunnel floor. It was a working Saturday, but the surveyor was not available, so I was sent out to put in levels for casting the floor. I put in the levels and the team cast the floor. On Monday morning I was called before the mine manager looking after the tunnel and informed that I had messed up the levels and there was a bump in the road. So, the next time you drive though the Waterval Boven tunnel and feel a bump in the road, that was me.
Another job that I was put in charge of was to supervise the construction of a rock catching gabion wall about 500 m on the right- hand side of the road from the tunnel. There were some very steep cuttings on the road with large boulders embedded in them. In rainy weather these large boulders would work loose and run down the steep slopes onto the road. As a first-time gabion wall builder, we only got the first line of gabions filled before they were condemned by the Resident Engineer. We then had to rebuild them making sure the corners were square. After a huge amount of effort, we got it right and the wall was accepted
Tell us about scary incident/s happening on site in your first site work experience
After 5 months at the Watervalboven site I was transferred to Overvaal Tunnel about 30 kms on the Piet Retief side of Ermelo about 300 kms from Johannesburg. The tunnel was part of the new Coal railway line from Ermelo to Richards Bay where Transnet were effectively doubling up the railway line so trains could run in both directions at the same time and increase the capacity of the line.
Overvaal tunnel was +- 3.8 kms long with a big cutting of +- 1,300 m long on the West side. I was appointed as an assistant to the chief surveyor. It took a while before I had gained more experience and the chief surveyor had enough confidence in my abilities so I could go out and do minor survey tasks on my own.
Working in the tunnel could be quite nerve racking, as you could go into the tunnel from one portal or incline shaft and then travel through the tunnel to different areas where survey work was required. We were in a deserted area the one time and there was a small earth tremor and rocks started falling from the tunnel roof. When I turned around my two survey assistants were about 200m down the tunnel from me. It did not take me long to catch them up and we were out the tunnel very quickly.
Another occasion was to arrive at one of the faces from the wrong side and find the face all charged up and ready to blast. We moved away from that face very quickly. There would normally be a siren that would be set off before each blast, and flag men would check both sides of the area before a blast, but we had not heard or seen the flagmen and we were not taking any chances.
What were some of the most important lessons you learnt early on in your career which helped you?
- Communication is particularly important that you know what you are being asked to do. Ask if you are not sure and repeat your understanding of the task so there are no misunderstandings. Don’t be embarrassed to ask dumb questions. They may not be so dumb after all. Especially when you are new
- Make sure the time sheets are right. Do some spot checks and make sure before you sign them off? In-correct wages cause a lot of unhappiness on sites and can result in unnecessary strikes by your staff and hourly paid employees.
- Check you have the right drawing revision. Again, another area that causes unnecessary problems especially when you must break out concrete or strip shutters.
- Measure twice & cut once. This is an old saying but its amazing how many times it happens, especially when you are under pressure. Another 5 minutes of checking can save days of unnecessary work.
- Get someone to check you if possible. Again, a simple thing to do, but its not done and causes problems.
- Teamwork. A construction site is like a soccer team. If all parts of the team are not working together then you are not going to succeed without difficulty.
What has been the most impressive job you have worked on?
Medupi and Kusile Power Stations - Until you have worked on a big power station you cannot believe the size and the scale of a big engineering project in a relatively small area. It’s like a Bauma construction show in real life with 1,000`s of people on site, cranes and equipment, pieces of steel and equipment getting delivered all the time, laydown areas full of hi-tech equipment and machinery.
What a tragedy that the efforts of 1,000`s of highly skilled people, working long hours, under very difficult circumstances have resulted in 2 projects that have run so late and have gone so far over budget and have some serious quality problems. Hopefully, we can learn valuable lessons from the challenges that were encounter, to ensure future big jobs in South Africa run a lot more successfully.
What has been the most satisfying thing you have found about your job?
When you arrive on a bare site, starting digging the foundations, work long hours, receive little pay, spend little time with your families and at the end of the job you have this big structure that creates work for people, employment for people, creating a tangible asset that has purpose. You are ``Making a Difference`` to people and to the development of South Africa.
This industry is said to be one of the toughest industries, how did you manage to stay in for so long?
It is a tough job, but it is also interesting and exciting. The down side of civil engineering construction is that it is all over the country and can also be working cross border.
I was lucky in that I spent +- 15 years working on the mines in Carletonville. I needed to leave home before 06h00 every morning and drive +- 100 kms out to Carletonville to get to site before 07h00. Work all day and then at 17h30 or later depending on if we were pouring concrete or there were other challenges, then drive home +-100 kms. Working 10.5 hours a day minimum, then travelling for 2 hours made it a long day, plus we also worked some Saturdays.
So maybe in retrospect I was not so lucky, a lot of my friends in different industries, worked a lot less hours and in those days, they did not travel an hour to get to work. In civil engineering contracting you need to be reasonably lucky. 20 years ago if I asked my boss where I would be working in 3-6 months’ time, more than likely he would not be able to tell me, as he did not know what tenders would be coming out and which ones we would be successful with on our tenders. If you had just finished a job and your company was awarded another one, then there would be a good chance that it would be given to you to run.
Luckily, I had a reasonably good run of getting jobs reasonably close to my home so my family could stay at home, the kids could stay at their schools and I could do the travelling. It was still a hard life with lots of travelling. I was averaging 6,000 – 7,000 kms a month.
What advice would you give to those who are new in the industry?
- Grab your opportunity. The Construction industry is not in a good state now so don’t waste your opportunity. Work extra hours when required, volunteer for additional work to get more exposure, read up on new projects that are coming out to tender, find out about new systems and equipment that are coming up in the market, subscribe to industry magazines and newsletters.
- Do not stop learning. There are new challenges everyday in the construction industry, new things to learn, make use of the opportunity that you have, to learn from the experienced colleagues and your bosses.
- Show Respect and be friendly. Show respect to all your colleagues and fellow workers irrespective of their positions. You will be surprised how much you can learn from all levels of people in the industry, especially if they have been around a lot longer than you. If you are respectful and friendly, then most people will be willing to show you the ropes.
- Be inquisitive. Spend time after working hours finding out more information and alternatives to the problems so you are better prepared and can offer alternative solutions.
- Be Accountable. If you say you are going to do something then do it, If you cannot meet your commitment then it is your responsibility to communicate and agree an alternative solution. Keep your team informed.
- Communication is especially important. Ensure your communication is clearly understood to avoid mistakes or misunderstandings. You will soon be able to judge which people you need to spend more time with to get your message across.
- Get Solid experience. Do not job hop. Try and spend a minimum of 3-4 years with your initial employer so your have solid experience at the start of your career.
In your opinion what are the challenges facing the industry currently and how can they be overcome?
- Labour issues, Community Unrest, and the Construction Mafia. There are too many construction jobs that have been delayed or stopped due to labour, community unrest or the mafia. The government, unions, community’s, and business need to sit down and agree a ``Construction Labour Agreement`` that will be applicable to a particular area or job. The contractor needs to apply it, Government, Unions, and the community need to support and enforce it. An arbitration team needs to be appointed on each major job to resolve any issues that occur and timeously make decisions while challenges are being resolved. No work stoppages should occur while challenges are being resolved. We cannot have a situation where we 2 lose +- 2 years of time on major jobs due to labour challenges as happened on Medupi and Kusile Power Stations, nor a situation where the project manager of a construction site needs to spend 65% of his time resolving labour issues.
- Construction skills. A large number of the skilled experienced construction workers are getting old, the big construction companies that used to train newcomers to the industry have either closed down or have cut their training budgets dramatically due to lack of work, a large number of new comers into the industry have only limited experience. It should be a condition in future tenders, possibly financed by the skills development fund, that each contract employs a trainer plus a number of skilled constructions labour to train and mentor the newcomers into the industry. This will need to be a long-term project as you cannot provide the necessary training and experience quickly.
- Unless we can resolve items a & b above we are going to get into a similar situation like the rest of Africa where all big construction jobs are done by the Chinese with Chinese labour and then no South Africans will have jobs in the Construction Industry.
- Government Infrastructure spending. This has been talked about for several years. We are hearing that there are +- 50 projects that are ``shovel ready`` They need to come out to tender so people are aware of them, jobs can be tendered and awarded, and people employed.
- Lack of Municipality Engineering capacity. A fair amount of work used to come out from the Municipalities as far as roads, townships, water, and sewerage works. That work is still required to be done but many municipalities do not have engineering capacity or budgets to do the work. Government need to appoint private consulting engineers or retired municipal engineering staff to take over the responsibilities of the municipal engineering departments, train the existing staff and put out tenders for the required work. Government or the Development Bank need to finance the projects and oversee the implementation.
- Mining Charter. I spent most of my life working on Civil engineering jobs on the mines and they were very good places to get experience on different aspects of civil engineering. If the government can agree a new mining charter with the Minerals Council, and all interested parties and give investors’ confidence in the future of their mines in South Africa, then there will be a lot more investment in the Mining sector and therefore a lot more work for the construction industry.
- Consideration should be given to use an Alliance system of contracting to ensure the projects are done on time, within budget and to the correct quality. This enhances teamwork between the client, consultant and contractor and can result in savings on the contract. On all the projects that I worked on over the years, the ones where the client, consultant and contractor worked together to resolve problems were the most successful.
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