Projects

Vela VKE Consulting Engineers, Pretoria was appointed by the Pecanwood Holdings (Pty) Ltd in January 2000 to provide the external electrical reticulation to the following new extensions within the Pecanwood Golf Estate :

• Extension 9          -    22 erven
• Extension 11        -    164 erven
• Extension 14        -    34 erven
• Extension 15        -    16 erven
• Extension 16        -    26 erven

A South African first and multiple award-winning project, Public Private Partnership to construct, operate and maintain the Drive as a tolled concession. This included rockfall shelters, high-energy catch fences, structures, civil, geotechnical, electrical, project management and tolling work.

The construction of Maguga Dam was undertaken by the Maguga Dam Joint Venture (MDJV) comprising Consult 4 from South Africa, Lahmeyer and the Swazi Group of, which ZMCK is the major member. The dam is the second initiative in a major development project by the Komati Basin Water Authority.

The detailed design of seven railway viaducts totalling 4.3km in the southern section of the prestigious Gautrain project.

The project comprised the widening of carriageways on the median side throughout and adding lanes to the outside on specific sections. Structural works included bridge widening, reinforced concrete median barriers, crash barriers, retaining walls, bridge demolition and the erection of overhead gantry signs. Geotechnical work included bridge and retaining wall founding, temporary lateral support during bridge construction and mechanically stabilized earth fills. Extensive pavement rehabilitation was also conducted.

The Mangaung Intermodal project is one of the 2010 Soccer World Cup legacy projects and as such it is being financed by the National Department of Transport. The contract value of the project is R400 million and will consist of mutli-storey transportation centre with ranking facilities for minibus-taxi’s, buses (BRT) and long-distance coaches. A series of dedicated pedestrian links, will connect the centre to the Bloemfontein train station and the Central Park bus station.

Vela VKE in conjunction with eThekwini Water and Sanitation has developed asset management software that:

• Assists technical management as well as operational staff
• Is GIS based and allows the uploading of images
• Calculates the remaining asset life
• Performs simple financial calculations
• Calculates maintenance budgets or costs
• Bridges the gap between technical and financial staff

The purpose of the Wastewater Treatment Works (WTW) Asset Management System is to provide a consistent and logical method of accessing structural inspection information, relevant attribute data and asset register information for the wastewater treatment works within the greater eThekwini Municipality.
The primary function of the WTW Asset Management System is to implement an effective Asset Management System (AMS) providing a user interface which provides various users with access to current and historic data.
The application developed by Vela VKE Consulting Engineers accesses a SQL central database which resides on a central server for security and backup processes. The application was developed with the aid of Microsoft Visual StudioNET and is Internet Explorer (IE) compliant and may be used on any system running Internet Explorer (IE) 5.0 or higher.
Users may access the system through IE by simply entering their security details. This provides the user with access to details of the assets with the treatment works as well as asset condition information. In addition the system provides the user with detailed imagery of the asset including geographical data which may be accessed via a web-based GIS mapping tool developed by the firm.

The Plettenberg Bay Bridge, designed by Vela VKE’s Cape Town office, has won two awards. A commendation from the SAACE Glenrand MIB Awards for a project less than R5 million and the Steel Award in the bridge category from the SAISC.