The Civil Engineering Contractor March 2018 | Page 19

ON SITE
Pooled water from seepage through the soil from the vast groundwater reserve beneath the site.
redesigns on specifications. “For
example, requirements changed on the
GLA and tenant parking requirements,
as well as back-of-house changes.”
In addition, running along the
site’s boundary is a spruit that had
to be considered, as it forms part of
a wetland. “We had to be sensitive
to the environmental impact of the
construction on the wetland area
and so too, to our LEED rating,” she
explains. “This influenced the design
significantly,” Coetzee adds. “However,
this worked in our favour ultimately,
changing the design of the building.
This included the bigger floor plates,
enabling a faster turnaround of the
tenant’s business models.”
Another challenge, according to Du
Plessis, is the consolidation of the
Pretoria and Johannesburg Deloitte
offices, he maintains. “Within Deloitte
are numerous departments and so too,
a major consideration is the merging
of cultures within those departments,”
he explains.
LEEDing the way
One of the main features of the
building, is its sustainability aspect,
with a Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design (LEED) silver
certification. This rating system
is devised by the United States
Green Building Council (USGBC)
to evaluate the environmental
performance of a building and
encourage market transformation
towards sustainable design.
Coetzee explains that while there is no
water recycling, there will be rainwater
harvesting, which will be used for
irrigation in the property. She adds that
another option being investigated is
the vast amount of groundwater that is
seeping into the site, requiring extensive
dewatering — also undertaken by
Bamboo Rock Construction. “While
this is not LEED-related, we are looking
at the viability of using it for irrigation
and other usage, depending on water
quality,” she adds.
Pelser stresses that the execution
and construction of the earthworks
has come under pressure to ensure
that the watercourse is safeguarded
against any type of contamination. “The
entire eastern boundary (alongside the
wetland) has hay bales tucked in along
the fence line to act as a rudimentary
sieve for any run-off washed from the
site during rains, to prevent the silt
polluting the waterway,” he explains.
“Our top soil — about 6 000m 3
— is being stockpiled as well, and
hydroseeded for future use on the site
once we are done,” Coetzee says.
So too, no material from the site is
going to waste as Chapman adds: “All
the material that has come out of the
site is not just going to spoil but is
being re-used, and all the rock is being
crushed and re-used as well.”
This development comes at a time
when the construction industry is
in dire need of a boost seeing that,
towards the end of 2017, the bigger
construction companies were struggling
to find contracts as the sector slid into
the doldrums. The smaller companies
managed to eke out an existence on the
smaller contracts awarded, but nothing
of any magnitude was being developed
in the turgid economy.
From Du Plessis’s perspective, in
terms of what is happening in the
industry now, he notes that “there are
still pockets of growth, with companies
succeeding and managing to make a
living.”
He says that since the election of Cyril
Ramaphosa as the new ANC president,
however, there has been a noticeable
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