Professional Documents
Culture Documents
CIV2020X
WSP
Introduction
This is a report that serves to communicate the performance of the required vacation work as per
the degree dictates, along with providing a brief outline on the use of knowledge learnt from
academics as it was applied real civil engineering in the construction industry. A total of more
than 11 weeks were done, with the design office work consisting of four weeks, and construction
site work taking up the rest.
Construction Site Work: The first three weeks of the vacation work was done from the 25 th of
November 2015 to the 23rd of January 2015, at the SAKI JV9 venture, at the Mbadlane site
where there was an extension of the D42 road going to the Sikhuphe International Airport. The
vacation work was done with Inyatsi Constructions Co, the principal contractor. The scope of the
worked covered the following departments:
Soils Laboratory: This was one of the most important departments on site, as this is where the
constructions materials and mediums were tested to ensure against failure, after completion of
the construction. The following are some of the tests that were done, over the duration of the stay
at the Soils Laboratory - Plasticity Index determination, Sieve analysis test; Slump Test; Sand
Replacement test, and compression test of concrete.
Concrete - bus bay construction: Work here comprised of observing and partaking in clearing the
ground, mixing the in situ soil with crush, followed by compaction before setting out the
dimensions of the stop, which involved placing the precast bus bay structure. Concrete would
then be poured and used to build around the precast waiting room structure. Care had to be taken
to cast the concrete in stages and leave out some sections for the next day, to make allowances
for shrinkage of the concrete. The required concrete strength was 30 MPa. A poker vibrator was
used to reduce air voids, through vibrations.
Batch Plant: The main activity here was batching, which was the process of mixing the different
components that make up concrete these include materials such as stones, river sand, crush
sand, cement, water, and additives (plasticizers, accelerators, and retarders which are used to
regulate the setting time of the concrete). The mixed designs for the batches of construction were
provided by the consultant engineers. The most important thing practise learnt at the batch plant
was the moisture correction of river sand. Moisture was pinpointed as the biggest cause of error
in the batching, and on days after high precipitation, the moisture content of the soil was
obtained so as to reduce the amount of water used in the batches.
Asphalt: The work here comprised of taking the straight edge test to check the cross slope of the
road, observing the laying of roadworks, and updating the work charts for the road chainages
The second stint of construction site work was done with Inyatsi Constructions Co again at the
C47, King Mswati III site, where there was the construction of a housing complex to cater for the
airport employees. The duration of the vacation work was three weeks, which ran from the 22nd
of June to the 9th of July 3015. For the entire stay, Inyatsi's work comprised of doing the
earthworks which included the roads, laying the sewer pipeline and water reticulation. This
second stint was spent working closely with the site agent, Doctor Dlamini. The scope of work
undertaken included getting experience on doing purchase requisitions, forecasts and profit and
loss reports.
Design Office
This was done during the academic holidays of 2016, at WSP (now WSP-Parsons Brinckrhoff) at
the Waterfront office. The first two weeks was spent at the Civils unit, while the last two weeks
were spent at the Structures unit. The scope of work done was as follows:
Civils Unit: The first week was spent working on a road section, designing the horizontal
realignment. The work included using the SANRAL Roads manual to check specifications such
as the tapering of the road, and the minimum radii in intersections. There was a lot of supervision
around using the SANRAL manual, and the road design manuals provided by the City of Cape
Town. The designed realignment was then drawn up using a combination of AutoCAD, and
AutoCAD 3D.
The second week was spent drawing the layout of a waste water treatment plant (WWTP) that
was being tendered for in Pretoria. The work also incorporated the design of a Primary
Settlement Tank (PST) at the WWTP. This had to be done with minimum supervision using
resources from the company database, and from the web. At the completion of the design of the
PST, costing had to be done. This meant calling different distributors of material, getting price