South African construction company Concor’s Roggeveld Wind Farm project has won the Civil Engineering category in Construction World’s Best Projects 2020 and also received a Highly Commended Award in the AfriSam Innovation in Sustainable Construction category.
The company put its stamp of experience and quality on the 47-turbine, 147MW project, which was developed by Red Rocket under government’s REIPPPP initiative, and constructed by EPC contractor Nordex Energy South Africa.
Concor successfully completed the civil balance of plant work, including turbine bases spread over a construction footprint of 40 hectares. Greg Oosthuizen, Concor’s Project Manager, pointed out that the wind farm situated in the Karoo, 40 km north of Matjiesfontein is also in an environmentally sensitive area, with strict compliance standards applied to all construction activities.
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Daily Safe Task Instructions
Accessing the sites for the wind turbine bases and hard stands was over difficult terrain, and required the construction of 34 km of access roadway. Some 25,000 m3 of readymix was used, supplied from Concor’s own on-site batch plant.
“We operated ten readymix trucks on the project, and carefully managed efficiencies at the batch plant to reduce the turnaround time of these vehicles. We also had to adjust the pumping rate when pouring the readymix at the bases,” said the project manager.
Roggeveld Wind Farm will contribute 5,55000 MWh a year of clean energy to the national grid, and its location in a wind channel with high wind speeds will make it one of the most energy efficient of South Africa’s wind farms built to date. With hub heights of 100 metres and rotor diameters of 130 metres, 40 of the wind turbines are 3,15MW capacity while seven are 3MW.
“We found that open communication between the teams was critical, and we relied on the Daily Safe Task Instructions to ensure that everyone was aligned with what was required. There was little room for error in base construction, especially regarding the tolerances for the levelling template. While different teams were working simultaneously on the base construction, it was viewed as one activity,” said Mr. Greg.