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Vuka Project Management Services was appointed by the
SA National Parks to implement the project, with
Africon as the consultant and George based ACV Civils
as the contractor. The project has been estimated at a
cost of R19,5 million and served the dual purpose of
job creation and tourism development.
Africon’s task was to re-design and monitor the
upgrading and construction of existing roads in the
game viewing area of the Park, as well as to design
and monitor the construction to formation level. The
access road comprises of a 30km new southern access
road from Colchester in the south over Addo Heights,
to link up with the Parks existing road system in the
game viewing area to the north.
Approximately 28km of road was upgraded to a gravel
surface and 14km of bitumen-surfaced roads were
upgraded in the park’s existing game viewing area.
“The upgrade of the roads has allowed for
uninterrupted business flow, as roads no longer have
to be closed due to rainfalls that exceed 8-10mm,”
says Graham Webster, engineering representative from
Africon Port Elizabeth.
South Africa has a total of seven natural biomes – a
self-sustainable area in terms of the natural
environment and five of these biomes are found at the
National Addo Elephant Park. “Animals in the “big
five” area included elephants, often within ten meters
of a work team, while the introduction of lion into
the park in September 2003 held a further complication
with regard to safety arrangements,” says Webster.
Apart from the fauna, the park’s flora was equally
challenging during the design. “Determining the
horizontal alignment of the new southern access road
was difficult with the impenetrable bushveld valley.
We therefore had to clear the undergrowth on the 30km
new access road with the use of manual labour,” says
Graham.
A further challenge was the establishment of a winding
road so that visitors at the park could anticipate
what was around each bend and did not see a lot of
cars up ahead. “Although this helped |
it was quite difficult for the team to spot any
oncoming dangers up ahead,” says Graham, adding that
when they dealt with the vertical alignment, they had
to ensure that it could accommodate busses while still
minimising the amount of cut to fill. to create the
feeling of being alone in the “bush”,
The design of the project was completed with the use
of Civil Designer, a suite of design modules forming
an integrated data gathering, drawing, surface
modelling and design system. “We had to tweak the
design on many occasions in order to meet the criteria
of the client and the program handled these changes
with ease,” explains Graham.
A requirement of the poverty relief program that
supplied the projects funding, was to select
appropriate construction methods that would generate
the maximum number of employment opportunities. The
project required manual labour for drainage and
drainage structures, the finishing and trimming of
road verges, landscaping and planting work, as well as
the manual collection of discarded railway ballast
from alongside the Addo Patterson Railway line. The
ballast along the railway was used to improve the CBR
of the calcrete material used as a sub-base layer for
the bitumen-surfaced roads.
The final challenge was to identify and obtain
permission from the Park’s Management for the
borrowing of suitable road building material for the
project. Three calcrete quarries and one Table
Mountain quatzitic quarry was identified through
material testing. Environmental approval was obtained
to establish a crushing plant at one of the quarries
to produce a G4 basecover using the Table Mountain
quatzitic sandstone.
Graham’s experience on the project is summed up by the
following words: “The numerous challenges that we were
exposed to, has certainly made this one of our most
interesting and enjoyable projects thus far. We found
that the co-operation from our clients Vuka Project
Management Services, SAN Parks Management, SAN Parks
engineer and ACV Construction was especially
invaluable in the projects completion.” |
