Taking a closer look at construction activities on The Innovation Hub site

An architectural perspective on the gatehouse being erected at the entrance to The Innovation Hub site. This 18 m high structure will consist of a leaning tower built with pre-cast concrete blocks with a strobe light a the top, a suspended roof and a guardhouse. Taking a closer look at the construction activities on the Hub site - images like these will soon be uploaded from the recently installed webcam on the site.

The transfer of land process for The Innovation Hub, from the University of Pretoria to The Innovation Hub Management Company (Pty) Ltd, has been completed. This enables the Master Development Plan for the site, and the site development and buildings plans to be finally approved.

According to project manager, Martin Schindler of Arup, the sub-division of land parcels to owners can also now proceed. "This facilitates the approvals of all the required planning for the site. We can now sub-divide the available gross floor area into customised parcels for companies to build on the site - a number of these are currently under discussion," he said.

Architects Naren Mistry-Moross JV have produced a new perspective on the gatehouse, an 18 m high leaning tower that will consists of pre-cast concrete blocks with a suspended roof, a guardhouse and a strobe light on top. The off-site manufacturing of the concrete blocks and fabrication of the steelworks is currently in progress.

Taking a closer look at construction activities on the site has now become possible with the installation of a webcam. This facility allows the automatic upload of visuals to the Hub's website on a regular basis. "The webcam enables direct dial-up from a PC with the necessary software to look at the activities on the site," says Schindler.

The off-site manufacturing of the pre-cast concrete beams for the new bridge over the N1 is well under way. The construction of the bridge piers to support the structure for the new bridge is also in progress. The pre-cast beams will be placed onto the piers over a weekend to ensure minimum disruption to traffic.

Work on the internal storm water, potable water and sewers have been completed and road works on the internal roads are in progress. Large portions of the ground floor slabs and columns of the core buildings, the Innovation Centre and the Enterprise Building, have been completed and work on the first floor slabs of both buildings has started.

The construction on the Sappi building that will house their new Technology Centre and Paper Academy is also running to schedule, with the surface bed and the columns to the ground floor slabs having been completed.

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