Since the 19th century Parsons Brinckerhoff has been instrumental in infrastructure projects around the world. Energy Digital finds out about
the work it’s been doing in South Africa
Written by Chris Farnell & Produced by Oliver Bishop
Parsons Brinckerhoff is a company with a proud history, spanning decades and the globe. Founded in 1885, by William Barkley Parsons, the company has been dedicated to infrastructure engineering services initially focusing on rail and transport infrastructure, but also power stations and power transmission lines. Parsons Brinckerhoff worked on the subways in New York in 1904 and the canal across Cape Cod in 1914. More recently it has worked on power stations in Australia, as well as the fast track trains in Taiwan.
Parsons Brinckerhoff also has a strong presence in South Africa, where it is doing valuable work upgrading the country’s infrastructure. Nobody knows more about this work than Gavin Young, Managing Director of Parsons Brinckerhoff in South Africa. “Over the last couple of years the business has been growing rapidly,” Young says proudly. “We have a headcount of over 400 people, including expatriates, and we have quite a few working for us here, providing technical support to our projects. Considering that in 2006 we had about 60 people, that’s a phenomenal rate of growth.”
The business is split into several different areas, including the power business, the mining business which is relatively new, and the environmental business.
“In the environmental side of the business we do environmental assessments and management plans for a range of clients. In the mining sector we have been providing full project life cycle services from concept through to execution. The bulk of our work is in the power sector.
POWERING A NATION
In South Africa, Parsons Brinckerhoff has been involved in several major projects. Currently, the company is working on the Medupi power station.
“When it’s completed will be the largest dry cooled power station in the world,” Young boasts. “It’s such a large project and it’s critical for the South African power industry that it goes well.”
Current plans are to bring the first turbine generating 800 megawatts on stream in 2012;. Once all six turbines are on line, the power station will be generating 4,800 megawatts.
“We’re doing the project management and engineering support provision from an office here in Johannesburg,” Young explains, “but the actual construction site is near the coalfield that’s going to provide the coal for the power station.”
As well as being instrumental in furthering South Africa’s energy industry, Parsons Brinckerhoff South Africa is also working on taking its expertise abroad.
“We are using our expertise in power to work in countries like Namibia, Botswana, and Mozambique. We’ve also got some work up in Kenya Uganda and Tanzania. That’s important for the future of both the sub continent and our business.”
Of all the infrastructure projects in process at the moment, there are few on the Africa subcontinent, or maybe even the world, as big in scale and ambition as the upgrade South Africa’s infrastructure is undergoing in preparation for the World Cup this year. It’s no surprise to find that Parsons Brinckerhoff has a hand in it.
“We haven’t been involved in any of the stadium builds,” Young admits, “but we have done some of the advanced engineering on the rapid transit train that’s currently under construction and nearing completion.”
THE SUPPORT OF AN INDUSTRY GIANT
Parsons Brinckerhoff South Africa is able to take on these huge projects because it has the weight of the global Parsons Brinckerhoff behind it, which itself was recently bought up by Balfour Beatty. For Young, this is a huge advantage.
“South Africa is part of the developing world in that we’ve some infrastructure but it lags behind that of the developed world,” Young explains. There is a strong drive to improve infrastructure in the provision of transport, water and power to the country. However there is a critical shortage of skills necessary to deliver these projects. “Up until 1994 apartheid impacted negatively on the education of the majority of people, so there are not enough engineering staff coming out of the universities, or even going into universities. There aren’t enough engineers to support these build programmes, so we have developed a method which allows us to deploy the engineering skills that Parsons Brinckerhoff and now Balfour Beatty from around the world to support us in providing infrastructure development and engineering services that are so critical for improving the standard of living of people in South Africa.
However, Young realises that South Africa can’t rely on outside talent forever, and his company is doing everything it can to encourage home-grown talent.
“We have quite an aggressive graduate recruitment and development and training programme,” Young explains. “What we’re trying to do is get hold of young graduates and offer them the right sort of training to make them as productive as possible as quickly as possible in our environment. As the business grows we propose to expand that. One thing we’ve found though is it’s quite difficult to do that because engineering graduates are quite scarce. So we are moving backwards in the education chain to get people to study engineering, or even maths in school, so they get maths at a high enough level that it allows them to study engineering professionally. We are looking at programmes to assist us to smooth the way for talent to come through in the engineering disciplines.”
This conscientious approach to business is something Young believes is essential to doing business in South Africa.
“We have a strong focus on ethics, which is something you really need to focus on when you’re dealing in less-well developed economies,” he says. “The commercial systems and practices are not as well developed as in the first world, hence you really need strong ethics to be able to manage in the business environment.”
Looking forward, Young has high hopes, both for his business, and for Africa as a whole, two things he sees as intertwined.
“The company will continue to grow, we’ve had rapid growth since 2006 and looking at our expected pipe line of work we expect that to continue. We have a number of activities underway to make sure that happens,” Young tells us. “We’re also hoping to increase our geographic footprint, by winning work further North into Africa. We’re seeing that the subcontinent is becoming more stable, so it’s easier for Aid Agencies and the World Bank to invest in those countries. Most of that investment is in the infrastructure sectors of these economies, so we’re hoping to expand our footprint outside Southern Africa and into the rest of the African market space.”
FACTS AT A GLANCE
COMPANY NAME: Parsons Brinckerhoff South Africa
MD: Gavin Young
ESTABLISHED: 1885
EMPLOYEES: 400
OPERATIONS: Infrastructure construction
www.pbworld.com