The Civil Engineering Contractor January 2019 | Page 20

ON SITE
proper geotechnical investigation —
where guys just do back-holes or
they do penotrometer tests, which
can give you an indication but do
not tell you where the rock is. The
back-holes only go down three-
and-a-half metres, and if the rock
commences below that, it doesn’t tell
you anything about the rock.”
The general challenge with piling
is to have the right machine for the
job. For this reason, Gauteng Piling
owns all its own equipment. In
fact, nationally, there are not many
machines for hire, “and there are
far too many piling companies in
the country for the amount of work
available at the moment”.
Explaining his company’s growth,
Haas says that piling is a capital-intensive
business, thereby creating a significant
barrier to entry. Barrow Construction
owns 40% of Gauteng Piling. “When
we were getting established in 1996,
it was our original intention to
overcome the heavy requirement for
capital by selling shares to five separate
construction companies — but Barrow
(through John Barrow Snr) was willing
to take all 40% in what was a strategic
partnership. It has been a very good
partnership for us. This deal enabled
us to buy our initial three machines (at
current value of R1.8-million each),
for which Barrow assisted us with
arranging bank finance.”
The site is surrounded by established buildings such as Oxford and Glenhove – most of
them developed by Barrow Properties.
Nico Haas, CEO of Gauteng Piling, with
supervisor Victor Mudau on the right.
The motivation for the strategic
partnership, says Haas, is that while
capital is essential in acquiring the
costly piling equipment, so too is
the need for deep knowledge and
experience for each type of area
to be piled. “This is possibly even
harder to acquire than capital, and my
contribution [to the partnership] was
my experience in working on all types
of difficult sites, including dolomitic
sites and on bridges.” He gives the
example of cross-border work in
Africa, which is popular today but
for which Gauteng Piling finds the
risks too high. “One can lose a lot of
money when working on sites with
terrible ground conditions. Especially
in the DRC, there are sites where
the ground is volcanic ash, and on
drilling down five metres it becomes
like cotton wool. We worked on one
such site, lost a lot of money, and
will consequently not go cross-border
today.”
“The single biggest challenge in
piling is having experienced people
who understand the conditions and
are able to interpret the soil report.
However, based on current market
conditions in South Africa, the biggest
challenges today are getting work at
the right price, and then getting paid,”
says Haas. nn
Professional team
The site is about nine metres below ground.
18 | CEC January 2019
Client: Barrow Properties
Main contractor:
Barrow Construction
Architect: LYT Architecture
Civil engineer: Kantley & Templar
Quantity surveyor:
Barrow Construction
Geotechnical: Gauteng Piling
www.civilsonline.co.za