Francois has high praise for Africon and says that the company looks after their staff. He received a bursary from the organisation and completed his in-service training there. Since then, Francois has grown from strength to strength as a Design Technologist.

The last eight years have been extremely eventful. Of the many projects that stand out in Francois mind, it was the Angolan Road’s and the Waterkloof Air Force Base projects that have captured his imagination the most. “The Waterkloof project was really interesting. We were tasked with the geometric design to improve the alignments for both the main and secondary runways, the re-alignment of two of the main taxiways, a new hardstand area as well as a series of connecting taxiways.”

“The size of the Air Force made the project a lot more challenging than if it were a normal design. We had to take the classifications of the air force base into account during the upgrade. One of the problems encountered, was dolomite. This resulted in the team having to investigate various options in order to accommodate the stormwater,” explains Francois.

The project was done in a joint venture with Ninham Shand Consulting Engineers. “The purpose of the venture was to upgrade the Air Force base to a code 4E. This was however not an easy task as the site did not conform to minimum requirements and standards. As a result, a few taxi ways had to be moved because there was not sufficient distance between the links.”
 

The project was detailed with the help of Civil Designer. “We created a model of the entire site using the program and made additions and changes as the project unfolded. I have been using the program since the days of Stardust and have nothing but praise for the software,” he says. With the joint venture, Ninham Shand handled the stormwater design while Africon did the geometrical portion.

The Angolan roads project was a project of a different kind. This 160km single carriageway low standard road ran through a coffee plantation. It was however the numerous design challenges that made the project memorable. “The road ran through particularly mountainous terrain. Prior to the Angolan war some thirty years ago, the road was in fairly good shape. But since the war, the road has deteriorated due to heavy seasonal rains and overgrown vegetation.”