Construction World June 2016

ROADS AND BRIDGES

TRANSPORTATION division

Towards a

Basil Read’s Roads Division executive officer, Bruce Morton, spoke to Wilhelm du Plessis about how the Roads Division is increasingly becoming a transportation division, capable of servicing the needs of its clients.

What is the focus of the Roads Division? The Roads Division has, historically, always been a strong part of Basil Read’s business. We see ourselves as the premier road builder in the country and we strive to provide a level of quality that sets us apart. We have predominantly focused on larger national and international clients. Our main client locally is the South African National Roads Agency Limited (SANRAL) – we work on its concession routes and national routes – as well as the provincial routes that it increasingly manages. We also want to focus on private concessionaires and also larger municipalities – it is a market that we are looking at entering. We are generally not involved in smaller municipal road construc- tion projects – unless it is linked to other work that Basil Read is undertaking. The company has a Developments Division that develops projects such as Cosmo City, Malibongwe Ridge and Savannah City and where our capacity and skills to construct road networks and civil services is utilised. The Basil Read Roads Division is increas-

ingly becoming a transportation division servicing all transportation infrastructure requirements. The recently completed St Helena Airport is an example of this: the Roads Division supplied many of the expertise and capacity of the multi-disciplinary project team that developed and built the airport. There are many synergies between doing mass earthworks for an airport, port or railway and roadworks. How big is the division? At the moment its annual revenue is between R1,3-R1,5-billion. It undertakes between six to eight large projects (R500-million plus projects) at any given time. This represents about a third of Basil Read’s total revenue. It has 50 dedicated senior managers and approximately 1 700 to 1 800 people on site. Do you do work in Southern Africa? What are the difficulties? We do yes, but these projects are client, funding and competition dependent. We have completed a number of projects in Namibia, but this market is currently flooded with inter- national contractors.

Basil Read’s Roads Division executive officer, Bruce Morton.

We have offices and some minor operations in Mozambique and Botswana. As we focus on larger roads and earthworks projects, the work we do cross-border is linked to the national imperative of providing transporta- tion links or large infrastructure development. At the moment road building in Mozambique is linked to the development of the major gas fields in the North of the country. These gas fields are not progressing at the anticipated speed due to various reasons and thus there is less road building and earthworks projects being undertaken than anticipated. It is a logistical challenge to work cross border. In general, African border control is

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The Roads Division’s work at Coega illustrates that it is moving from a roads only to a more transport orientated division.

CONSTRUCTION WORLD JUNE 2016