GVK-Siya Zama quantity surveyor, Clive Godfrey believes that the team won the R40m tender based on its long-standing reputation and vast experience in the building and restoration spheres. These include landmark buildings such as the Voortrekker Monument, Durban City Hall, Mandela Family Museum and Colonial Building.
After being abandoned in the mid-1990s, the building fell into disrepair - being exposed to the harsh coastal elements and becoming a haunt for vagrants who would make fires that resulted in some sections burning down.
"Many parts of the building were badly eroded, corroded and rotten due to water ingress and fire damage," Godfrey says. "Our first task was to get rid of the debris left behind by vagrants and gut the building out. Then we had to demolish and rebuild sections of the floors, walls, and roof that were either unstable, superfluous due to layout changes or needed to be replaced with new, more energy efficient materials.
"Over the last hundred years or so, the floors had been raised a number of times to reduce the risk of water damage. Consequently, we have uncovered underground tanks and old tramlines under the rubble. We broke down sections of the building's walls that were damaged and reused the original bricks to rebuild them," Godfrey explains.
"We also had to duplicate the plaster features around the windows and replace the existing frames with timber ones which required taking samples of the originals to fabricate new ones that resembled the genuine article. We then replaced all of the glass with energy efficient Solarvue glass."
Strong winds had ripped off some of the roof sheeting and parts of the building were left exposed for the past ten years. This caused sections of the roof to collapse, damaging two of the gables. "To rectify this we had to stabilise the gable walls with raking shoring, using a steel girder to tie them back into place. We also had to rebuild the gables and made templates from the originals before they were demolished," Godfrey says.
"To rebuild the roof, we had to reuse the old steel roof trusses that had twisted and warped over rotted and collapsed timber supports and get them realigned and plumb again. All of the associated steel work was also bent inward and one or two trusses were just hanging in mid-air, supported only by purlins. We straightened all of the purlins and roof trusses by tensioning them back into place."
In addition to refurbishing the building, the GVK-Siya Zama team was tasked with constructing a cantilevered deck to reach out towards the stream running next to the property. "We had to punch holes through the external brick walls to cast monolithic cantilevered beams of 134m3, which will support the new deck.
"We firmly support the MBDA's objective of bringing people to the urban and historical heart of the city through promoting the historical significance of the area and improving the infrastructure and believe that the renewed and improved Tramways building will do just that," concludes Godfrey.
