Construction World April 2019

PROJECTS & CONTRACTS

SHOWCASING WASTEWATER ENGINEERING EXPERTISE The technically-complex KwaNobuhle Area 11 – Link Sewer project still stands out as a sound example of the extent of JG Afrika’s skills and capabilities in wastewater engineering.

T his leading South African firm of consulting engineers was appointed by the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality (NMBM) to provide civil engineering consulting services, including design, contract administration and site supervision, for the project. Since its completion in 2016, this quality infrastructure has made a substantial difference to the living conditions of people living on the outskirts of Uitenhage, Eastern Cape. It supplements the capacity of an existing sewer pipeline that had reached its full capacity and could no long cater to the increase in sewerage from rapidly-expanding housing developments in-and-around KwaNobuhle. Velisani Nyoka, a seasoned JG Afrika technologist who worked on this project, says that the sewer pipeline discharges to the KwaNobuhle Wastewater Treatment Works (KWWTW), located north-east of this large township. “The pipeline is approximately seven kilometres in length and comprises mainly un-plasticised polyvinyl chloride (uPVC) (Class 34) heavy-duty pipe sections. They vary between 250 mm and 500 mm in diameter and were manufactured according to South African National Standards (SANS) 791 standards. Meanwhile, high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic pipe was installed at the road crossings using pipe-jacking technology to minimise the impact of construction activities in built-up areas. Ductile pipes were used to cross a valley, with this 50 m-long section of the pipeline installed on top of four 600 mm x 400 mm concrete columns,” Nyoka says. One of the challenges in construction the pipeline was the varying gradients of the terrain through which the pipeline traverses. They ranged from 0,25% to two percent in the flat areas and between two percent and 12% in the steep regions. It was, therefore, impossible to use deep excavations in the very steep sections to prevent high velocities. A notable feature of the project is the 8 m high and 250 m-wide gabion/Terramesh retaining wall that was built along the severely

eroded and unstable embankment between KwaNobuhle South and North. This structure protects both the new and old pipelines that run along the river during heavy rains, while also successfully addressing previous environmental and public safety concerns. Unsuitable material was cut back at an average length of eight metres from the face of the existing embankment. Using an excavator, about 7 300 m 3 of material was removed during this stage of the construction of the wall. The 3 m x 3 m x 1 m Terramesh baskets were then installed on 100 mm-thick 19 mm stone foundation that was built along the embankment to create a robust wall. It features a step of about two metres in height and 0,5 m sideways along the entire length of the face to the final level. Nyoka says that the Terramesh baskets were manufactured from heavy Class A galfan (zinc alloy ZN 96AL5) wire to SANS 675 and SANS 10244-1 standards. “They were coated to SANS 1580 and EN 10245-5 standards using a 0,5 mm polyvinyl chloride (PVC) coating and woven into a double-twist hexagonal mesh type 80 in accordance with the SANS 1580 standard. More than 1 700 m 3 of stone was used to tightly pack the baskets, which have a two metre-long ‘tail’ protruding from the back end to further strengthen and stabilise them during

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CONSTRUCTION WORLD APRIL 2019