Page 89 - SAICE book proof 2 LATEST JULY 2014

s a i c e
NORTH WEST PROVINCE

by from time to time. It became a worldwide tourist ◊ From top to bottom:
attraction and the venue for one of the highest paying ◊ Royal Bafokeng Stadium
golf tournaments in the world. Civil engineering mostly ◊ North-West University
hides behind the major façades, waterfalls and tropical ◊ Mooi River Mall
forest plantings, but in essence this playground is one of
the most ambitious and complex projects ever tackled
by a team of built environment professionals.

25°20’27.74” S, 27°05’22.34” E

2. royal Bafokeng sports stadium is a
modern multi-purpose sports facility, seats about 40
000 and was used for one match in the 2010 FIFA World
Cup South Africa soccer tournament. The Mmabatho
Stadium is also a multi-purpose stadium and can seat
59 000 people. It has a very unique design in the
sense that spectators are seated on various separate
platforms with each facing the playing field at a slightly
different angle. It was designed and built in 1981 by a
Russian construction firm. Major problems had to be
dealt with in terms of stormwater since this town is
virtually flat and it is almost impossible to drain water
away by gravity.

25°39’48.02” S, 27°13’19.38” E

3. North-West University came about when,
what was previously known as the Potchefstroom Uni-
versity of Christian Higher Education and the University
of Bophuthatswana, merged. This university also has a
campus in Gauteng and both campuses offer engineer-
ing courses. A BSc civil engineering degree is in the
pipeline although at this stage students can start their
engineering studies here before continuing to complete
the full course elsewhere.

26°41’27.92” S, 27°05’35.13” E
keep changing the environment and in this case the
river defied the calculations.
4. Mooi River Mall is unique in a sense that the
main building spans across the Mooi River. This placid
stream has behaved itself since the middle seventies 26°42’46.66” S, 27°06’19.66” E
when it became a wide stream through the town of
Potchefstroom on a bright sunny Monday. At that
stage it even made a brand new bridge useless when 5. Mines tend to be energy-intensive operations
the approaches were flooded and when traffic on the and also demand high levels of infrastructure and trans-
main N14 route had to be redirected to the old bridge portation components. Vast stretches of this province
which remained high and dry. Flood lines remain a is dominated by concrete headgear and ore-handling
challenge for even modern engineering since humans structures, railway lines and roads all over. The main

1