Hermanus to get a facelift
A R1bn urban regeneration project has been launched in Hermanus, opening up major property development opportunities in and around the upmarket town in Western Cape. Intended to boost tourism in the area, the Hermanus redevelopment will include refurbishment of parts of the existing central business district, several new residential developments and the addition of nine holes to the Hermanus golf course.
(©www.bday.co.za)

Addington hospital may go under the hammer
Durban's Addington Hospital, situated on prime property on South Beach and, in the view of many, an eyesore and waste of valuable land, may soon be up for sale to make way for new development. Provincial Health Secretary Professor Ronald Green-Thompson confirmed substantial sections of the hospital would be sold as part of the health department's rationalisation process.
(©www.iol.co.za)

ApexHi at the centre of buying activity
THE property loan stock sector has seen a flurry of corporate activity this week with ApexHi at the centre of the storm. ApexHi, the recently listed property loan stock company, announced the acquisition yesterday of 91 properties for a consideration of R837,7m, boosting its portfolio to R1,3bn. The transaction will be settled through a combination of R315,3m in cash and the issue of about 104-million linked units.
(©www.bday.co.za)

Hot price for big N Cape sun chimney
The environmental impact assessment (EIA) and feasibility study for Eskom’s project in the Northern Cape to generate electricity using energy from the sun started this month.
(©www.engineeringnews.co.za)

Kruger Park rebuilds to resist floods
Reconstruction of the worst flood damage to the Kruger National Park (KNP) in 50 years has reached the halfway mark, reports Sebastian Mathews of Umbono Management Consultants, which is overseeing the project.
(©www.engineeringnews.co.za)

Bullet train from airport to Sandton in 12 minutes
Imagine travelling from Johannesburg International Airport (JIA) to Sandton in twelve minutes. Imagine booking your ticket to fly from Sandton to Central London, and not from JIA to Heathrow. Imagine the seven million foreign visitors arriving at JIA, now paying up to R250 for a bus or taxi trip, taking the train to Sandton at much less than R100 a ticket, with on-board television and even Internet connectivity.
(©www.engineeringnews.co.za)

East London secures R100m for water projects
The Amatole District Municipality (ADM) in East London, in the Eastern Cape, has secured close to R100-million for water-services projects from external funders for this financial year. Government communications agency BuaNews reports that this is 238% more than the target of R40-million, set in the ADM Water Services Department Plan (WSDP).
(©www.engineeringnews.co.za)

Virgin Active takes strain
Richard Branson's Virgin Active is still struggling up an incline 150 days after muscling into the SA fitness and lifestyle sector by plucking the Health & Racquet Club (H&RC) from the collapsed heap of the once-mighty LeisureNet.
(©www.fm.co.za)

Examining its last gasp loans...
The commission of inquiry into the collapse of LeisureNet - ranked as the biggest corporate disaster in SA - kicks off early next month with the focus clearly on "last gasp" loans made to the health and fitness group by a variety of banks.
(©www.fm.co.za)

NEI gets shareholder approval for the company to be liquidated
Northern Engineering Industries Africa (NEI) said yesterday it had received shareholder approval for the liquidation of the company and the sale of the businesses and assets of its operating divisions, together with land and buildings, to Alstom, a French company. There will be a liquidation dividend of about R11 for one NEI share. The disposal is subject to Competition Commission approval.
(©www.bday.co.za)

New SA acid plant by 2003
Following board approval, Merisol, the Sasol-Merichem joint venture, has announced its intention to build a plant to manufacture para-hydroxy benzoic acid (PHBA) in South Africa.
(©www.engineeringnews.co.za)

Four-plant SA–Japan chemicals project
Sasol hopes to have concluded negotiations with Japan's Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation (MCC) to form a joint-venture company that will construct acrylic acid and acrylates plants at its Midland site, in Sasolburg, by the end of the year, says Sasol Solvents MD Anton Putter.
(©www.engineeringnews.co.za)

Aug start for second jv ferrochrome furnace
Swiss minerals group Xstrata has commissioned its newest ferrochrome furnace at the Wonderkop plant in South Africa. Reuters reports that Furnace 5 is the first of two furnaces constructed in a joint venture with Samancor, a subsidary of newly-merged BHP Billiton.
(©www.engineeringnews.co.za)

US drops pipe-dumping probe
It is too good to be true! Just weeks after voting to institute anti-dumping investigations against South Africa and four other steel pipe exporters, the US International Trade Commission (ITC) has dropped all but one country from the target list. This means that local producers will be able to continue exporting to the lucrative US market, which absorbs 20 000 t of South African welded steel tube and pipe with diameters up to 406 mm every year, worth around $7-million.
(©www.engineeringnews.co.za)

State rail firm in R1bn capex rollout
State-owned rail corporation Spoornet plans to spend R1-billion on capital projects next year, much of which will go to the upgrading of locomotives.
(©www.engineeringnews.co.za)

PGM rush takes hold in SA
Gold, the traditional mainstay of South Africa's foreign exchange earnings, has been eclipsed by platinum's more lively market, tied to industrial demand. Record palladium and platinum prices over the past 18 months have encouraged South African mining houses to consider diversifying into platinum ventures and invest in huge capital expenditure projects.
(©www.bday.co.za)

Anglo postpones work on Gamsberg
With world zinc prices sitting in the sink, as JP Morgan says, it was a good move. Anglo American has postponed construction at its Gamsberg Zinc Mine yet again, not that this should surprise anyone, given the state of the zinc market, which is surpassed by only the sorry steel sector
(©www.bday.co.za)

Stainless at vanguard of SA steel consolidation
The proposed Columbus-Acerinox deal hinges on formal written agreements being negotiated and concluded among the parties, the satisfactory completion of due diligence and the requisite approvals from the respective boards, stock exchanges and other regulatory authorities and third parties.
(©www.engineeringnews.co.za)

Eight firms bid for Uganda power utilities
Uganda has invited eight international firms to bid for its electricity generation and distribution companies, officials have said. Uganda's Utility Reform Unit invited prequalification bids on Monday for 20-year concessions in the Uganda Electricity Distribution Company (UEDC) and Uganda Electricity Generation Company (UEGC).
(©www.engineeringnews.co.za)

Six shortlisted for SA-Moz pipeline
Energy firm Sasol has announced a shortlist of six contractors to build a $600-million pipeline to supply natural gas from offshore Mozambique to South Africa.
(©www.engineeringnews.co.za)

Moz sugar industry receives boost
A new project guaranteed by the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (Miga), a member of the World Bank group, will help rehabilitate and partially privatise Mozambique’s largest sugar estate, creating thousands of jobs and generating significant economic and social benefits in the country’s Marromeu region.
(©www.engineeringnews.co.za)

Big cement project plan for Morocco
Morocco's leading cement firm, Lafarge Ciments, has launched the construction of a $103-million plant expected to boost its output capacity by 25%. The new unit, Tetouan II, ten kilometres from the northern city of the same name, is scheduled to go on stream in August 2003 and produce up to a million tons a year.
(©www.engineeringnews.co.za)

SA taps into R8bn Nigeria power project
Some of the larger South African suppliers to the power-generation sector have missed out on significant export opportunities and multimillion-rand contracts with oil-rich, but power-starved Nigeria.
(©www.engineeringnews.co.za)

New light-chrome pump material
THE South African subsidiary of an international pumps and valves group is overseeing the manufacture in this country of a revolutionary new abrasion and corrosion resistant alloy, to a much higher standard than had previously been achieved from imports, and is consequently hoping to export products made from the material worldwide.
(©www.engineeringnews.co.za)

Enviro accolade for lube-blend plant
Petroleum company Total South Africa continues to expand and upgrade its Island View blend plant, in Durban, Kwazulu-Natal.
(©www.engineeringnews.co.za)

Guns before houses is folly too big to hide behind a Mercedes
The defence department owes ANC chief whip Tony Yengeni a big thank you. The debate about whether he and others received kickbacks in the R43 billion arms deal has been raucous enough to drown out any small voices still asking questions about the merits of the deal itself.
(©www.busrep.co.za)

New home owners disillusioned
PORT ELIZABETH Three weeks ago when Rosina Sekotlo and her daughter received keys to their four-roomed brick house, they were overjoyed: they were one almost 300 families who had had to make way for the development... Hardly three weeks had passed since she took occupation of the house and already the roof and the toilet were leaking and the cement floor was pot-holed: poor workmanship was beginning to show.
(©www.bday.co.za)

Standard Bank Properties in residential JV
Standard Bank Properties has entered a joint venture with developer Sable Homes to undertake the first phase of the Ashby Estate residential development at the Johannesburg Country Club (JCC) in Woodmead.
(©www.mweb.co.za/property24/)

City of the future rises north of Cape Town
A city of the future - and the size of East London - is fast taking shape on Cape Town's northern shore, hailed by town planners as the fastest-growing formal settlement in the country. Take a drive to Blaauwberg and you see the neat rows of new houses that have sprung up in the past decade. Charles Rudman, urban and economic development manager for the Blaauwberg Administration, said the latest development, Blaauwberg City, just north of Table View, would expand to the size of East London, housing 500 000 people.
(©www.iol.co.za)

East London's rentals look strong
EAST London's residential rental market is in its strongest state in decades, but landlords have been warned they need to improve the quality of flats if they want to take advantage of soaring rents.
(©www.bday.co.za)

Huge legal bill fails to dislodge squatters
First it was Bredell, then Boksburg, and now Benoni, where a group of squatters have illegally occupied open land. A Benoni farmer, Abraham Christiaan Duvenage, is at his wits' end after spending R120 000 in legal fees trying to eject squatters from his land.
(©www.iol.co.za)

Land interventions 'under way'
The delivery of houses and the processing of land claims are to be given Cabinet priority because of the massive backlog in South Africa, says President Thabo Mbeki. Briefing journalists in Pretoria at a report-back after a three-day Cabinet lekgotla held in Johannesburg earlier this week, Mbeki said that while more then five million South Africans had been housed by government over the past seven years, the backlog remained huge.
(©www.bday.co.za)

Gauteng plans to provide basic services
The Gauteng provincial government is to embark on a multimillion-rand project to provide basic services to households in the province. Trevor Fowler, MEC for Local Government, said on Wednesday the province's executive committee had held a strategic planning meeting to look at a number of issues, including the eradication of poverty.
(©www.iol.co.za)

Conveyancers form united front
Proposed government deregulation of the conveyancing profession, the consumer value of the mortgage origination industry and misconceptions on conveyancing fees are three key issues to be tackled by the newly formed movement Conveyancing for the Citizens. Releasing details of the movement at a specially convened press briefing in Durban, spokesman Gavin Gow said the movement was made up of conveyancers and attorneys and intended as a support group for the Natal Law Society and the Law Society of South Africa. Membership consisted of approximately 40 attorneys from throughout the country, but mainly from KZN and mostly in Durban. Attorneys excluded from the group were those supporting the bond origination movement in its present form. Gow said the support group agreed with the official stance of the Law Society, namely its opposition to some attorneys' agreement to pay any mortgage bond originators for work ostensibly done by the originator for that attorney, and its opposition to the third draft of the Legal Practice Bill which included the provision for non-attorneys being entitled to become conveyancers. He said Parliament would be asked to address the need for all originators to be strictly regulated by law. "For instance, there is federal law in the USA that a bank cannot pay a set introductory percentage commission to a broker, that the banks are allowed to pay only for work actually done for them and that any payments have to be disclosed upfront." He stressed that the group accepted that properly structured bond originators had a valid place in the market place worldwide, but stressed that they should be independent.
(©Rodney Hayter - The Property Professional Magazine)

Beware of home loan pitfall
Home buyers interested in properties owned by companies or close corporations should be aware that they will probably not be able to use them as security for a home loan. So says Dr Piet Botha, chairperson of the Nationlink estate agency group. He pointed out that many prospective buyers liked the idea of acquiring a "company owned" property because there was no transfer duty payable on the transaction.
(©www.mweb.co.za/news24/)

Now's the time to lock in your home loan rate
It's time to fix your home loan rate. That's the advice from top economist Dr Iraj Abedian of Standard Bank, who says interest rates are unlikely to drop much further. He also says investors in shares and bonds can expect to see their assets perform admirably in the short term
(©www.moneyweb.co.za)

GET A FREE PAGE ON THE ASAQS WEB SITE FOR YOUR FIRM
All firms who are members of ASAQS are entitled to a fully searchable page on the ASAQS web site. To make use of this offer you need to send your details on a form that is slightly hidden on the "New View" CD. Place the CD in your CD-Rom drive and open it using Windows Explorer. In the root directory you will find a file called Data form.pdf - complete the form and e-mail it as instructed.

New DPW rates
Browse to the CUG on the website. We have just published the latest rates for July.

Virus warning
W32.Sircam.Worm@mm
Discovered on: July 17, 2001
Be aware that a prolific new e-mail virus is spreading like wildfire. John Leyden writes: "The SirCam worm has revealed weaknesses in anti-virus protection relied on by many firms as a first line of defence against viral infection. It's been discovered that both Baltimore Technologies MIMEsweeper content filtering software and Symantec's perimeter protection product, Norton Antivirus for Gateways v2.x, fail to block the prolific virus."
Due to an increased rate of virus submissions, The Symantec AntiVirus Research Center (SARC) has upgraded W32.Sircam.Worm@mm from a level 3 to a level 4 virus threat. SARC has created a tool to remove this worm which can be obtained by clicking here.

The Value of Project Management
Continuing with the 4th part in The Value of Project Management Series we now take a look at the first step in the planning process:
1.0 Define the Work
How many times have you heard about or been involved in a project that failed miserably? Or perhaps it just was not as successful as it needed to be. Did you ever spend time looking back to see what caused the project to go wrong. If you did, chances are that you will have said "You know, we should have spent more time planning."
Most projects have deadlines, and it seems they are getting shorter and shorter. Hitting aggressive deadlines puts pressure on the Project Manager to start the project as soon as possible.
However, before the project work begins, there needs to be time spent in up-front planning to make sure that the work is properly understood and agreed to. Click here to read on.
(©www.tenstep.com)

Slow on the draw
THE TRADITIONAL method of procurement as per the FIDIC Red Book has the employer responsible for design. To avoid delay, the timing of the issue of drawings must mesh with the ordering of materials, supply of labour etc. Controversy arises when contractors allege that drawings have been issued late resulting in delay and extra cost.
What may seem a straightforward matter of whether or not the drawings were issued late is not so simple. Normally, the contractor's price is based upon the Bill of Quantities and tender drawings. By the time work is due to start, many of these drawings will have been amended. So before work starts, the engineer will give the contractor the ‘construction issue’ drawings from which the work will be built.
It is common for these drawings to have essential information missing or for parts of the work to be still at the design stage with further drawings to be issued later. For example a particular retaining wall may still require detailed design. The intention is for work to begin based on the construction issue, intended as adequate for this purpose.
Disputes may arise when contractors allege that the drawings to plug these gaps were issued later than necessary to prevent delays to the works. In disputes of this kind, the first question to be answered is when are the drawings due for issue? Surprisingly, the standard forms of contract are less than precise. FIDIC Red Book requires the contractor to serve a notice on the engineer giving details not only of the drawings required but also why and when they are required. The contractor must also provide details of the effect, in terms of amount of delay and disruption, likely to be suffered if the drawings are late. Click here to to find out what is reasonable.
(©www.industryclick.com)

The August Calendar
On the 3rd August - GIFA breakfast forum - Venue: Wits Club, UWWR Guest speaker Neil Fraser, Executive Director of Central Johannesburg Partnership. Topic Projects, problems and politics of the Jhb Inner City Renewal Project. Cost R40 to members of sister organisations.
On the 13th August - Seize the Day! Personal Efficiency and Effectiveness -This course will be held at the Centurion Lake Hotel, Centurion. For more info contact Terry Deacon at 082 557 3119

Seen on ASAQS Classifieds
Quantity Surveyor (Luanda, Angola) Our multi-discipline company in Angola is looking for a QS/Cost Engineer with min. 2yrs experience in pre and post contract work to work on large projects (U$50mil. plus). Very competitive salary with airfare and accomodation - meals included.

New members to the CUG
A warm word of welcome to the following members who have joined us in the CUG during the past week:
Sean O'Riley
Ron Bowie
Richard Frankle
Hendrik van Tonder

Please note that your registration to the CUG will remain in force as long as you remain a member of ASAQS and there is no need to register every year. If you have not received an e-mail confirming your registration contact ASAQS.

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Take a peak into the nest of a Black Eagle