Page 30 - SAICE book proof 2 LATEST JULY 2014

s a i c e
FREE STATE PROVINCE

when temperatures can easily reach 20°C at midday in ◊ Below left: Municipal building in Bloemfontein
winter and plunge to –3°C at night. One could therefore ◊ Below right: Old buildings in Bloemfontein
venture to say that there is much more behind a glass ◊ Below centre: Power lines
façade than meets the eye of the uninformed. ◊ Bottom: Bloem Water is a major supplier of water

29°07’05.09” S, 26°13’27.48” E

7. Power lines criss-cross this province but few
people realise that these structures are the result of
civil engineering designs. Innovation led to pylon de-
sign to save on steel components and resulted in some
of the pylons having a single footing but supported by
cable stays. Although few people would see the struc-
tures as a thing of beauty photographers sometimes do
capture fascinating images of them.

8. Old buildings need renovation from time to
time and Bloemfontein is home to a number of beauti-
ful sandstone buildings from its glorious past as a Boer
Republic. But buildings grow old and civil engineering
has been called upon to provide structural and water-
proofing solutions from time to time.

9. railway workshops in Bloemfontein are not
only a series of rather old factory type buildings. These
facilities were once the biggest of their kind in the coun-
try. What is not well-known is that the workshops were
once transformed to produce munitions and weapons
during World War II – one could therefore speculate
about the role of engineering and in particular civil en-
gineering in the warmongers industry – not so civil as
we would like to think. As mentioned elsewhere many
wars, including the Anglo Boer War at the beginning of
th
the 20 Century was about controlling civil engineer-
ing structures and infrastructure such as bridges, roads
and railway lines. This province still boasts a number of
Block Houses that were erected by the British to guard
over river crossings.

10. The Central University of Technology was
established in 1981 as Technikon Free State. It edu- 11. Bloem Water is the major supplier of water
cates technicians and technologists in civil engineering for the Free State, a province flanked by the biggest
courses. As part of the South African government’s re- rivers in South Africa, namely the Vaal to the north and
structuring of tertiary education, it was promoted to the Caledon-Orange system to the south. To the east
University of Technology status in 2003 and enrolls a the Maluti Mountains of Lesotho constitute the border.
total of about 11 000 students. For South Africa the Lesotho Mountains remain the
source and generator of most of the water used in the
country. In an area known for droughts, the water man-
29°07’21.50” S, 26°12’47.16” E agement remains a priority for civil engineering. Major
pipelines feed towns across the area.
29°09’22.70” S, 26°10’06.38” E

1