Construction World July 2019

housing, building cheaper homes near the transport, leisure and retail facilities needed to create a community. One of its successes is 120 End Street in New Doornfontein, Johannesburg, where 1 500 affordable rental homes now house 6 000 residents. Amdec improved the whole area by regenerating a park, persuading the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) to reopen a railway station, working with taxi associations to tidy up the ranks, stocking the local library with toys as well as books, and encouraging Shoprite Checkers to open a branch in Joburg CBD for the first time in 20 years. It total, it redeveloped 15 buildings, including a school. “We completely turned it around from a neighbourhood which frankly was quite dangerous and unpleasant to one where young kids are playing in the park and I personally felt very safe walking around in a suit,” Wilson says. A key failure point with low-cost houses is that they are often built miles from transport hubs, shops, schools, churches and all the other

facilities a community needs to prosper. “You have to take a holistic approach,” he says. “We conceptualise schemes which have all of those amenities close at hand, so you create environments where parents can drop their kids off at a local school, where they have easy walking access to transport, and where they can shop before and after work.” Wilson is keen to develop similar areas in Cape Town, starting with a project in Ottery where it will build 1 000 lower-cost homes. It’s also working with the provincial and local authorities to identify old industrial sites that could be demolished and redeveloped as residential areas. “There is very little profit incentive in it,” Wilson says. “It’s more a commitment to doing the right thing in the country, and that’s why it’s so important that you are able to make money in other projects so you can contribute to less profitable projects for the benefit of society.” 

Reinstatement of STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT

Industry body, Consulting Engineers South Africa (CESA) congratulates Cyril Ramaphosa on his inauguration as President of South Africa. In keeping with President Ramaphosa’s call for a ‘New Dawn’ CESA would like to see the reinstatement of Stakeholder Engagement processes aimed at creating a transparent environment setting the stage for economic growth that is underpinned by investment in infrastructure development resulting in improved service delivery.

S peaking from his office in Johannesburg, Chris Campbell, CEO of CESA states, “It is imperative that we develop trust between the public and private sectors in order for our country to gear up for the demands of future growth. In order to be prepared for this growth professional service providers need to be able to plan and ensure that they can adequately respond to the needs for improved service delivery. This will require Government to provide sight of the country’s infrastructure development pipeline through increased stakeholder engagement.” He went on to state that if Government’s infrastructure rollout plans are shared early enough this will allow professional service providers to adequately prepare and ensure that they have enough capacity to handle the demand. This will mitigate the impact of suddenly placing huge demands on the industry. Campbell went on to say that most, if not all, previous infrastructure development plans would most likely need to be re-evaluated based on the country not reaching the predicted economic growth targets coupled with the negative impact of the global economic turndown as well as the impact of current US/China trade war. “In order to be optimally effective such revised planning requires a strong partnership between Government, investors and professional service providers. Consistent with the ‘new dawn’ approach we need to work on implementing healthy processes in building relationships that make for good service delivery of infrastructure projects.” Unfortunately, public officials well-meaning in trying to do the right thing have been forced to become nervous of engaging for fear of being accused of over-disclosure and even corruption. Campbell feels that there needs to be a broad stakeholder engagement and not just engagement of a ‘select few’ based purely on personal relationships, “What we require is open

and fair consultation with tenders being awarded based on competency”. CESA and its member firms are eager to partner towards capacity building in the public sector. “In order to provide optimally designed infrastructure taking into account its full lifecycle costs we require knowledgeable and technically capable public sector clients,” concludes Campbell. 

Chris Campbell, CEO of CESA.

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CONSTRUCTION WORLD JULY 2019