Construction World August 2015

PROJECT PROFILE

ABOVE: A 50 t crane will be used to place trees in special concrete boxes in this external garden area. LEFT: One of the signature siding walls which required high quality concrete to achieve the necessary finish. City Square, without unnecessary duplica- tion of infrastructure. “The site itself is quite constrained, if you take the canal and road system into account, in addition to the Bridge Park office development itself. “As we progressed with Bridge Park, and later began to work on Century City Square as well, the site area between the projects had to be carefully managed for equipment access and transportation of construction materials. However, our major strength is our project management capability. Our resources and processes in this regard not only assisted with Bridge Park, but allowed us to integrate seamlessly with Century City Square,” Jacobs explains. He attributes the smooth progress at Bridge Park to the co-operation of the entire professional team, in conjunction with the input of the client. “It has been a very tight programme. We secured the Bridge Park contract on a highly competitive tender basis. It has been a fantastic achievement on the part of the entire Murray & Roberts Western Cape team. We also have an excellent team of consultants that facilitated the process. At the end of the day it is the total team effort that sees a major project like Bridge Park through from start to finish,” Jacobs says. Murray & Roberts Western Cape has clocked up over 500 000 manhours without a single lost-time incident at Bridge Park to date, testament to the safety culture fostered by the Murray & Roberts Group’s STOP.THINK.ACT 24/7 programme. “We take health and safety very seriously and are very proud of our achieve- ment in this regard on this complex project site,” Jacobs concludes.

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Huge project Bridge Park forms part of a larger precinct development at Century City. Murray & Roberts Western Cape’s success at this prestigious office development resulted in it securing another contract, Century City Square, which is domi- nated by the iconic Apex Building, as well as housing a conference centre, a hotel, a mixed use building including offices, showrooms and apartments as well as parking. It will feature a canal system on two sides of the development with pedestrian and vehicle bridges. “It is a massive project, not only in terms of the entire footprint, but also in terms of the complexity of the individual elements. Bridge Park, for example, is a single component of the

entire precinct. By itself it was a challenging project that demanded attention to the finest detail and strict project management practices. This allowed us to not only meet, but exceed the client’s requirements,” Jacobs says. The project has recorded impressive statis- tics: 17 500 m 3 of concrete was used, in addition to 1 734 t of rebar and 6 500 m 2 of brickwork. The plastering comprised 19 934 m 2 of screeds, 9 131 m 2 of internal work and 9 757 m 2 of external work; 9 757 m 2 of Marmoran coating was used, as well as 28 426 m 2 of paint. Bridge Park demonstrates the capability of Murray & Roberts Western Cape to meet the complex challenges posed by such major projects. A particular focus was the subse- quent smooth transition to working at Century

CONSTRUCTION WORLD AUGUST 2015