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26
CONSTRUCTION WORLD
JANUARY
2015
PROJECTS AND CONTRACTS
The 148-room hotel forms part of
the Newtown Junction mixed-use
development, the biggest multi-
use development in the Johan-
nesburg CBD since the construction of the
Carlton Centre in the 1970s. The 8 000 m
2
hotel is being built by Archstone Construc-
tion of Pretoria for the developers, Atterbury
Property Developments.
Ignatius Maas, Gauteng Piling site man-
ager for the project on the corner of Miriam
Makeba and Carr streets (adjacent to the
Market Theatre), says the contract called
for the provision of 64 piles with an average
depth of 10 metres for the seven-storey hotel
scheduled to open next year.
“The piling contract provided some
unusual challenges and requirements. In the
Gauteng Piling providing the foundations for the new City Lodge Hotel in Newtown Junction.
CAPPED
PILING
for Newtown hotel
Gauteng Piling recently
provided the foundation piles
for a new City Lodge Hotel
being built in Newtown.
first place, we had to contend with excep-
tionally limited access, particularly at the
start of the contract, caused by building
operations on other encroaching facilities
that form part of Newtown Junction.
“Then we had to address redundant
sewer and stormwater services, for which
the concrete pipes were sandwiched
between concrete slabs about 250 mm
thick. These services required rectangular
concrete capping beams, joining sets of two
piles which were installed to straddle the
existing services where we could not drill
through them,” Maas explains.
Capping beams for piles aim at trans-
ferring loads from closely spaced columns
or walls into a row of piles. To install pile
capping, pile heads are stripped to expose
the steel reinforcement to be projected into
the pile cap. Steel reinforcement is then
placed at the desired location and a large
concrete block is formed to distribute loads
over the capped piles.
Gauteng Piling employed two rigs for the
City Lodge piling: a Williams LDH digger and
Soilmec RTAS which can drill into rock of 4 to
5 MPa. A third Williams rig was on standby.
Since the arrival of its first piling
machine in Johannesburg in July 1996,
Gauteng Piling has developed into one of the
foremost piling contractors in South Africa.
The company has to date completed over
1 500 projects and its current fleet consists
of 20 auger machines, two cranes, two bore
rigs, six Grundo hammers, and two lateral
support machines.
The Newton Junction was familiar terri-
tory for Gauteng Piling as the company had a
few months prior to the City Lodge contract,
provided the piling for extensions to the
Market Theatre complex.
Under the leadership of Hennie Bester,
past president of Master Builders Associ-
ation North, Gauteng Piling also provided
more than 500 piles for the construction of
southern African’s largest single-phase retail
centre, Mall of Africa.
Other recent contracts handled by
Gauteng Piling include the piling for the
large-scaled Value Logistics warehouse
in Kempton Park, the Fire & Ice Hotel in
Pretoria, The Grove Shopping Centre in
Pretoria, and the Bon Accord Police Station,
also in Pretoria.
The company also handled the piling
requirements for a new FAW auto dealer-
ship in Croydon in Ekurhuleni, as well as the
I’langa Mall in Mbombela (Nelspruit).
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