The Southern African Society for Trenchless Technology (SASTT) is celebrating its 21st anniversary, and with age has come a certain maturity for the society, SASTT honorary director, Joop van Wamelen, tells Chantelle van Schalkwyk.

“Over the past year, I have had the feeling, subjective as it may be, that the society is beginning to reach a significant measure of maturity. This is reflected by the number of technical enquiries we receive from local authorities and professional engineers – as well as the growth in membership over the past year,” says Van Wamelen.

There have been several highlights for the SASTT over these 21 years, but undoubtedly the highlight that will stay with Van Wamelen “for a long time” is that a corporate member of SASTT– Trenchless Technologies – leading a team of companies, was awarded the International Society for Trenchless Technology 2012 ISTT No-Dig Award for the project entitled ‘Port Elizabeth goes trenchless’.

“Another highlight is that, once again, SASTT awarded its own SASTT Award for Excellence for 2012 to an exceedingly difficult project known as Upgrading and Replacement of Sewers in Alexandra Township (Phase 3),” states Van Wamelen.

Focus forward

“My focus is directed by the board of SASTT. This is a team of seven professionals who share an unshakable dedication to the promotion of trenchless technology,” explains Van Wamelen.

As such, the focus for the 2013/14 period remains for the SASTT on building and strengthening affiliations or alliances with other professional organisations, such as the current ones with ECSA and IMESA.

The SASTT is also in the middle of a programme of developing SASTT standard specifications for trenchless technology. “These specifications are being drafted with an eye on constraints such as the technical skills of site operatives schooled and trained in the third world,” continues Van Wamelen.

He adds that the SASTT is working towards building capacity to provide technical training in trenchless technology for engineers, technicians and students.

Highlights to come in this period are also no less than the last, indicates Van Wamelen, with the SASTT to be represented at the international board meeting of the ISTT and the International No-Dig Conference and Exhibition in Sydney, Australia, in September this year.

“In addition, SASTT is working with the ISTT towards holding the second ISTT Masterclass and No-Dig South Africa Conference and Exhibition in mid-2014.”

Context and challenges

According to Van Wamelen, like all civil engineering work, the local trenchless technology market has been fickle. “Nevertheless, trenchless construction, rehabilitation and upgrading projects are on the go all over the country – and not only in the metropolitan municipalities.”

The challenges – and there are many, according to Van Wamelen – however, remain. He says one that SASTT can proactively do something about though is the fact that due to a quirk of South African public tendering legislation, a good deal of trenchless work is being awarded to what he terms “incompetent tenderers.”

“When these tenderers do not manage to subcontract the work to a competent company, they often make a mess of things. This gives trenchless technology a bad name – and is bad for the client’s budget,” says Van Wamelen, adding that the SASTT has approached the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) to convince it to introduce trenchless technology as one of the designated categories of specialist work in order to counteract this.

The potential for trenchless technologies to positively impact the local water context is gigantic and therefore needs to be properly utilised and taken advantage of, he continues.

“It is no secret that Southern Africa is losing an unconscionable portion of its potable water due to leakage from the reticulation networks. Trenchless techniques can find and fix these leaks very competitively, safely, effectively, and efficiently. It just requires the political will to start doing something about it,” concludes Van Wamelen.