PROFILE
Piling into the opposition
By Eamonn Ryan
Greg Whittaker , MD of Mega Pile Inland , cut his teeth in geotechnical engineering in the Durban area , where most homes adjacent to the coast are constructed on piles .
Mega Pile Inland
Ground conditions are extremely variable , particularly in Gauteng . Over the years , Mega Pile has had to develop many of its own systems , installation techniques , and machines as its own IP , says Greg Whittaker , MD of Mega Pile Inland .
In the decade 1996 – 2006 , Whittaker took his then-business , KwaZulu Natal Piling , from being a wannabe newcomer to one of the leading piling and geotechnical local businesses , to the point , he says , of being the company of choice by consultants and developers . Having been trained initially as a cost accountant , Whittaker joined his father ’ s construction business and — like his own business later on — worked his way from the bottom to the top , dirtying his hands every inch of the way . The construction sector at that time was booming in the lead-up to the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup and the launch of the Gautrain , which was boosting the entire sector in its wake . He built the business to more than 200 employees , by which time it came to the notice of the larger players , where mergers among construction firms were all the rage ahead of a strong trend to list on the high-flying construction sector of the JSE ’ s Main Board .
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The new owner , Sanyati Holdings , had an aggregate annual turnover of R2-billion , and Whittaker hit the big time . However , he wasn ’ t made for the corporate life . “ I missed the interaction with staff and clients and in 2009 left the business , and for the next two-and-a-half years , I was involved in property development in Durban and Johannesburg . This enabled me to spend time at home with my kids , but my passion was always in geotechnical engineering and I missed it . I decided to start anew ,” he says .
A challenging career
Yet , the piling sector is a specialised and highly collusive business , which Whittaker initially found tough to break into in the Johannesburg market . “ I was an outsider in this region — even though I was born in Johannesburg — and it took a great deal of determination and hard work . Then in May 2012 , Sanyati collapsed and went into liquidation , and I was able to buy back the plant and equipment and to employ the specialist staff I ’ d left in Durban and Johannesburg .” He entered into a partnership with a friend and relocated the head office back to Durban , where the business soon recovered to its former glory . A year later , the partnership was dissolved and Whittaker , tired of the weekly commute between Johannesburg and Durban , decided to establish the business in Gauteng , named Mega Pile Inland . The culture was returned to the owner-managed family business he had been used to since working for his dad . He is always pulled back to piling , he says , because once he had been blooded in this specialist field as opposed to building , he was smitten with the “ incredibly technical and innovative nature of piling and lateral support ”. One of the major challenges associated with piling is that “ a lot of geotechnical investigations are not accurate ”. There