Construction World June 2016

In Mpumalanga the division is upgrading a section of the road between Greylingstad and Standerton and the road between Standerton and Platrand.

not as integrated as for instance European border control. In addition, distance becomes a real issue. We currently have a project in Zambia – the transportation of bitumen from South Africa to the site takes between a week and 10 days. Many of these cross border projects are large projects funded by government. When governments run into financial difficulty, infrastructure plans, which are incorrectly viewed as less necessary for the financial well-being of the country, are downscaled or cancelled. Unfortunately infrastructure plays a vital role in unlocking the potential of those countries. What specialised services do you offer your road clients? Basil Read historically contained a number of subsidiaries – these subsidiaries have been disposed of or merged into the company which has been restructured into a number

of divisions now focussed on what we call the heavy construction environment and mining. Some of the thought processes and intellec- tual property of these subsidiaries, particu- larly the design and build and engineering processes that went into why we acquired them, still exists within the divisions and we leverage off this capability. In addition, our Roads Division is unique as not all the staff come from a construction only background – some are engineers with significant experience in the design and management of infrastructure projects while we even employ a former client. Equipment does not make a differ- ence – the people of a company makes the difference. We have a vast amount of intel- lectual property – from experienced project managers to young engineers who we are assisting in getting professional registration. We are fortunate to have experienced and highly capable people from senior managers

to final level grader operators who have over 20 years’ service with the company. One area where we can add value is in design and build. For example, the St Helena Airport project has two senior designers – they work for Basil Read and are therefore not subcontracted. Our ability to undertake design build provides us with flexibility in terms of looking at alternatives. How do you decide between a concrete or bitumen pavement? I have been fortunate to work worldwide. In developed countries – Europe, North America, Australasia, there is a difference in philosophy and in the order of how planning flows from the client, to the engineer and to the contractor. Africa is quite traditional when it comes to the design and construc- tion concept. Most of the time the design is already completed for the contractor ahead of time – the client has made a decision with

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CONSTRUCTION WORLD JUNE 2016