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Wednesday, October 06, 2010 |
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Constructing civil structures in remote African locations
:: News
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Source: Bob Fordyce
Stefanutti Stocks Civils (Pty) Ltd has recently completed two projects in Zimbabwe. The first, the construction of a concentrator for Zimbabwe Platinum Mines at Ngezi Mine. The second, a platinum concentrator plant for Unki Mines, a subsidiary of Anglo Platinum.
“Usually during projects, we seek to find the most innovative solutions to technical problems and try to push the boundaries in terms of our engineering capabilities,” says contracts director Bob Fordyce. “During our time in Zimbabwe however, we found an entirely different set of our capabilities being tested - above the logistical considerations including communications and power, we were faced with a difficult local economic situation, which meant food and local currency were scarce resources.”
The steep learning curve we underwent working at Ngezi certainly laid the foundations for a smoother project process at Unki. Furthermore, the successful completion of both projects has established Stefanutti Stocks in Zimbabwe, with the necessary expertise to undertake any project, of any scale, that may arise.
Ngezi
A concentrator plant was constructed for Zimbabwe Platinum Mines Ltd at the remote Ngezi site. The project consisted of the construction of two 5 000 ton silos, a mill area, rougher and cleaner flotation, thickener area, process water tanks, reagents storage & mixing, pipe & cable racks, offloading bunkers and a number of conveyor bases & infrastructure buildings. This also included the sliding of the two silos at 34m in height by our specialist slip-forming team.
In order to achieve the smooth running of this project, we needed to ensure that our planning and research was accurate, to
ensure supplies and materials did not run out. The majority of the equipment was exported from South Africa, and we had to factor in up to seven weeks to get our ‘cargo’ across the Zimbabwean border. All the built in items were also exported from South Africa, including the cement as the local cement was not of the desired quality. Local currency issues also made it
impossible to purchase goods locally - the only material available in Zimbabwe was the aggregates for the concrete.
Due to the non-availability of food in Zimbabwe, this also had to be trucked in from South Africa. The entire site team was given lunch on a daily basis, in certain cases this was the only meal the locals would have all day and they were also given the opportunity to take some home so they could share with the other family members. We also had to ensure that the South Africans working on site had enough basic supplies as nothing was available in Zimbabwe.
“We employed sixty percent of our labour force locally, these had to be paid in local currency,” says Bob. “With the rocketing inflation rate and restrictions on daily withdrawals, it took careful planning to ensure we had enough money on hand to pay out wages”. A definite benefit to the community was the skills development on the project which saw employees being trained to be shutter hands and construction hands. Local qualified civil engineers were employed and exposed to real “fast track” contracts and the experience gained will be extremely beneficial to their future career development.
The 18-month project was successfully completed under extremely difficult conditions. The concentrator has beencommissioned and is currently operational.The Ngezi project achieved and exceeded their one million LTI free
safety target.
Unki
The scope of works at Unki was to build a platinum concentrator plant for Unki Mines, a subsidiary of Anglo Platinum. This included again two 5 000 ton silos, a number of conveyors, a milling area, flotation area, tailings and concentrate handling, reagents plant and infrastructure buildings.
We got off to a good start on the Unki project as we could resource some of our plant and equipment already in the country. In addition the local knowledge gained at Ngezi, enabled us to get the contract off the ground a lot quicker.
A major concern during the project was the shortage of water, which caused problems with the batching of concrete and we eventually had to pump water out of the river to overcome this problem. At a peak, we employed 600 people on site, including our subcontractors. Once drinking water became a concern, we added bottled water to our shipment of food already coming in from South Africa. A cholera outbreak in the country did cause some concern, however we were fortunate enough not to have any of our staff affected.
The project was completed successfully after 12 months and we commend the clients project team Vhumbanani in
providing the works information on time.
“We have cemented not only structures in Zimbabwe, but also partnerships with local contractors and have also assisted in their further development,” says Bob. “We look forward to undertaking more projects in Zimbabwe and building on these new relationships”.
The Unki project achieved 800 000 LTI free hours.
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