KWAZULU-NATAL DEVELOPMENT - New KZN Regional Office Established - Water and Sanitation Africa , May/June 2010
Jeffares & Green, the long-established firm of consulting engineers, has undergone significant changes at its KwaZulu-Natal regional office in the past year. The company built spacious new offices at the Quarry Centre in Hilton, where it moved in mid-2009. In March this year, Jan Norris, who joined the company in 1996 as a geotechnical engineer and became a director in 2004, took over as branch manager from Corrie Meintjes, the renowned bridge engineer, on his retirement from full-time service after 31 years with J&G. He has agreed to stay on as an expert consultant.
The move to Hilton from the Pietermaritzburg office became necessary owing to ever increasing staff numbers. In fact, when J&G first moved into the Pietermaritzburg premises in 1990, there were approximately 20 staff but this number exploded in the mid-90s with the establishment of the water division to work on a contract to engineer over 60 water schemes to supply clean water to rural communities. Now there are over 70 staff members.
J&G undertook the building of the new office in partnership with Russell Collins, the landowner, developer and building contractor of the Quarry Shopping and Business Centre.
It is in this beautiful setting, on the cusp of the lower quarry, that J&G sited its new KZN regional office. J&G was responsible for the structural, civil and geotechnical engineering of the building which has a floor space of 2 600 m².
A challenge for the civil engineers was the impediment of the building to the natural flow of rain water and the solution was found in running a very large pipe under the entire length of the building to where it could discharge into the quarry. This storm water drainage was designed to blend in with the natural environment.
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