Paolo Trinchero, who recently took over from Dr Hennie de Clercq as CEO of the Southern African Institute of Steel Construction (SAISC), would like to see the southern African steel construction industry grow by at least by 5% per year for the next 10 years. “This will require improving relationships with our African counterparts and being proactive in looking for opportunities in the relevant existing and emerging sectors in South Africa and the sub-Saharan region,” he says.
Trinchero agrees with Donald Gips, US ambassador to South Africa, who said that the rising prosperity in Africa would open new markets for (American) goods and create jobs in both regions and that more and more people are of the opinion that 21st century will be the African Century.
“Africa has the potential to be the ‘continent of the future’ and for this institute to do its job properly we will increasingly have to live up to our name: The Southern African Institute of Steel Construction and ensure that we work together with our African – and especially sub-Saharan – counterparts to promote the skills and capabilities of the region.
Reaching our full regional potential will depend largely on combatting unnecessary importation of goods and services. “To this end, SAISC recently launched a campaign, which expresses the real impact of importing fabricated structural steel where there is no need to. The simple facts are that for every 1000 tons of structural steel imported 100 decent jobs are lost to ordinary South Africans and, given the ‘multiplier effect’, the negative economic consequences for the country are astronomical,” he says.
Trinchero says that that one of the primary motivations for the recent launch of SAISC subsidiary the Power Line Association of Southern Africa (POLASA) was to help protect businesses in this massive industry. “Formal structures enable better lobbying, standards monitoring and competitiveness, and we believe that POLASA will help protect thousands of jobs in the industry, which are often lost to foreign companies, whose skills are certainly no better than the local experts,” he says.
While the SAISC will continue to invest in promoting local businesses, it should not be construed that the institute believes in giving local companies the business at any cost and says, “We don’t believe in hand-outs. Our industry must remain globally competitive and continue to produce excellence at competitive prices. In this regard we have applied for funding to do a comprehensive benchmarking exercise with our international counterparts and, while I am convinced it will show that our industry is generally as good as it gets globally, the results should be interesting and helpful in assessing what needs to be done to maintain and improve our competiveness in the future.”
“Competitiveness and overall efficiency in our industry will be crucial if we are to play our part in the envisioned growth of the National Development Plan (NDP), which sets the goal of 5.9-million new jobs created in South Africa by 2020 and a further 5-million by 2030.
“To achieve this, the NDP expects that 2.65-million of these jobs will be in the sectors that most affect our industry – infrastructure and mining – and we need to ensure that our industry gets – and is geared for – as large a slice as possible of this work by engaging with government and working with them to unlock the projects that will have the greatest positive impact on all players in our industry,” Trinchero says.
According to Trinchero, among the most important areas for steel construction growth are the various components of the energy sector. “Energy in all its facets will be an important focus area for our industry. In the renewable energy realm, substantial quantities of steel are being used in the current Solar and Wind Energy rollouts; Medupi and Kusile, despite their challenges, have shown that South African fabricators can build these very large and complex structures and there is much talk of “Coal 3” which, given the opportunity, will enable South African engineers and contractors to show what they really can do.
Trinchero adds that while there has also been much talk of the development of nuclear power stations with many international players expressing their interest, oil and gas developments will possibly be the most significant game changer for the steel construction industry in the next 5 to 10 years. “Our most important task will be to help ensure that as much as possible of the work on these developing projects is given to local companies that have proven to be competitive.”
On the question of construction technology Trinchero says that steel framed multi-storey buildings, Light Steel Frame Building (LSFB) and steel bridges will play an important role in steel construction achieving the envisioned growth. “All are technologies of the future,” he says.
”Firstly, steel-framed multi-storey buildings have been a focus of the institute for some time and 2014 should be a watershed year for new projects and developments. Secondly, while a good proportion of pedestrian bridges are being built in steel, there is much room for improvement insofar as road bridges are concerned. Somehow engineers have not quite grasped how much less disruption there is to traffic with steel bridges, which can be almost completely fabricated off-site and then erected very quickly. Imagine how much time, money and road rage could be saved and averted if the only delay one had on a highway expansion was a weekend to erect the steel bridge?”
In terms of LSFB, the growth in South Africa of this construction method since the formation of SAISC subsidiary SASFA (Southern African Light Steel Frame Building Association) in 2006 has been nothing short of phenomenal. Blue-chip companies that have recently used this method for their buildings include MacDonald’s, Deloitte’s, Audi and Delta Motors.”
He adds that LSFB is an ideal method in times like these when energy costs are high. Firstly, construction time is significantly faster, secondly, much less transport is required to get the materials to site and thirdly, over the lifetime of an LSF building, there are very significant energy savings. “This is a method whose time has come in Southern Africa and we will continue to vigorously promote it,” Trinchero says.
