SAICE Western Cape Branch: Project Awards

During the SA Institution of Civil Engineering’ Branch dinner, recently held at Kelvin Grove, plaques were presented to the winners of the Regional Project Awards Competition.

Adjudication of the 2016 projects took place in May this year, with a panel’s scores bringing 60% of the marks and members at the presentations votes counting for 40%. Although top three projects were announced then, the entrants were unaware of how close the competition was until the Branch dinner.

The Western Cape project of the year: New Horizons Energy and Consulting Engineers JG Afrika continued to become a player in this global initiative when the FIRST large-scale waste-to-energy plant began processing material, in Athlone, Cape Town, early in 2017.

There is a lot going on on the triangular site in Athlone. From a daily dose of 600 tons of municipal solid waste, pure organic waste and wet trade waste, the state-of-the-art R400-million biogas plant, owned by New Horizons Energy, a subsidiary company of Clean Energy Africa, produces organic fertiliser, liquid carbon dioxide, compressed bio-methane, refuse-derived fuel and recyclables, leaving only 20% to go to landfill!

The project achieved 80,1% when the marks were added up – congratulations to JG Afrika’s Richard Emery and his team; and, of course, to the client whose commitment made it all possible.

When questioned about how he thought the project would fare in the national competition on 20th October, Mr Emery said he was “positive” – this after the guest speaker, André du Toit, the Big Positive Guy, had just addressed the gathering.

Second was another JG Afrika project where innovative methods were needed to shore up the sides of an exceedingly deep excavation while a house was being built in the middle of it all in Clifton, where no anchors were permitted underneath neighbouring properties – and naturally no instability of those properties. Hard on the heels of the winner with 79%.

And the close third on 78% was the City of Cape Town’s Implementation of Electrolytic Chlorination at Selected CoCT Reservoir sites, described by Mike Greener (appropriate surname!) as akin to your swimming pool’s chlorination but on a very large scale. It is very much safer than the conventional treatment using chlorine gas. The project design was handled by the City’s personnel.