The italian company has clinched an important contract for the supply of temporary construction site structures at the South African branch of CMC of Ravenna. The project envisages the construction of a motorway junction north of the city of Durban that includes two of the longest viaducts in the country.
The Made in Italy brand is a winner in South Africa. Pilosio, a company that manufactures scaffolding and formwork for the construction industry with a strong presence on international markets, has announced it has won an order worth around 1.5 million euros with the construction company CMC of Ravenna, which has operated for a long time in South Africa and has branches in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.
Indeed, Durban, in the KwaZulu-Natal province, is where Pilosio’s scaffolding and formwork will be needed, to the north of the African metropolis, to be precise, in order to provide the Ravenna Company with the equipment it requires for the construction of an important motorway junction, called the N2-M41 Mount Edgecombe Interchange.
In detail, Pilosio’s structures, 70% of which will be tailor-made specifically for this job, will assist in the construction of two imposing viaducts created with the “casting” system, thereby avoiding any interference with the traffic below. The dimensions will be 26 metres high by 947 metres long, and 18 metres by 443. Once finished, the first will be the longest in the entire country. In total, the financial value of the works to be carried out on site by the Italian company CMC amounts to 83 million euros.
Pilosio will supply 200 square metres of P300 formwork for foundations and trusses, 500 square metres of special steel formwork divided into five sets for the construction of the viaducts’ pile shafts, an additional 350 square metres of special steel formwork made up of three sets for the construction of the pier caps, two sets of Maximix model formwork and custom-made products for a total of 940 square metres, as well as the Omnimode shoring system with customized solutions for the creation of the suspended work platforms to be used in the installation phase of the roadway ashlars.
The technical solution guaranteed by Pilosio was decisive in winning the order, as was the substantial amount of customization of the systems that make up the supply, around 70 percent of the total. These will be required for the constructions of the piles, the pier caps and the base of the roadway. Pilosio’s technical office produced a swift and high qualified response to the various critical areas of the construction site, with the emphasis on rapid supply times, coordination with the various organisations involved in the project (especially the firm VLC for the roadway ashlar casting technology), the requirement to design a formwork system for the piles that could be adapted to two different sizes and for the roadways of the viaducts, optimised for the use of installation technology with buttresses. The motorway interchange to be constructed by CMC will also include junction works such as slip roads and underpasses that will mostly be constructed with Pilosio’s equipment.
Winning this contract is only the first part of Pilosio’s wider strategy in the African continent. South Africa is the perfect hub for serving all the neighbouring sub-Saharan countries, many of which have some of the highest growth rates in the world. The CMC commission marks an important step forward for Pilosio in the company’s design expertise, given the technical complexity of the structures constructed ad hoc for the client. This is the outcome, above all, of the investment in the technical office and R&D by the Italian company which currently now has almost fourty employers.
