The South Africa National Roads Agency (SOC) Limited (SANRAL) excels in giving inexperienced SMMEs opportunities to acquire hands-on skills and mentorship through its projects.
Through its community development projects, many inexperienced contractors have spoken gratefully about the impact of putting into practice the knowledge acquired from the classroom.
Viwe Fikizolo began her career in mining after graduating with a degree in human resources at the Nelson Mandela University. After years spent in the mining sector, she established her own company, Beafanum, and returned home to Ginsberg Township in Qonce.
Her company is among the SMMEs awarded contracts in the construction of Rhayi Community Development Project.
“SANRAL has done a very good job in giving us the skills through training and the practical experience in doing the actual construction work,” she said.
After three months of training, Fikizolo has now been awarded a contract to lay macadam in the Rhayi Community Development Project. She has employed and supervises a team of six people, one of whom is semi-skilled.
“Four of my employees are from here at Rhayi and the other two still come from within the Qonce area,” said Fikizolo.
She said her background in mining helped her to adapt easily to working in the construction sector.
“Mining, just like construction, is men dominated space. I love working in a male dominated environment doing things men think only they are meant to do,” she said.
“We can learn a lot from each other, and we need to respect each other.”
Although Beafanum is a Grade One CIDB company, Fikizolo said her goal is to grow it to become a Grade Nine CIDB even if that means a couple of SMMEs come together to do the work.
“Someday I would love to be a company like WBHO even if I don’t run it all by myself. We are a couple of SMMEs, so we can get big tenders of around R500-million and give work to smaller SMMEs,” said Fikizolo.
Another SMME working on the same project is ARG Construction Projects, owned youth representative, Athenkosi Gcingca. Gcingca was studying music at the University of KwaZulu-Natal but dropped out and came home to Qonce during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
He formed ARG Construction Projects soon after this and started with small projects in his ward such as grass cutting. He has been involved in the building sector as a sub-contractor.
“I still have a passion for music but more as a hobby. I teach some students, I have my own music equipment, I do performances on weekends, but the future is in construction,” said Gcingca.
He took part in the same three months training as Fikizolo and after that, he was awarded a contract for construction of a 1.4km sidewalk in Rhayi Community Development Project.
“I have learnt that as an emerging contractor I must be at the site most of the time in order to understand the work thoroughly,” he said. “I want to be rooted and grow in civil engineering projects.”
Apart from that, he would like to do horticultural related work and infrastructure maintenance. Gcingca aims to reach Grade Five CIDB in the next two years.
However, he said work on the site was not all smooth sailing as they would sometimes run out of material, and because they were not responsible for purchasing their own material, at times they would wait for days for it to be delivered.
As Gcingca said, “That is the downside of it and it’s not good because we lose out production time due to something I could prevent if I was allowed to.”