The rubber of the airplane’s wheels is touching South Africa’s sturdy soil. After checking out and grabbing my bag I am picked up from the airport and immediately driven to site. The student driving the buggy is on the end of his internship period and I will be replacing him for the upcoming 6 months.

 
I’ve been really excited to go to South Africa and work on this project because when it was finished it was something that the whole world could watch during the world championship football 2010. So I have been able to say: look at something that I helped building!

 
I was participating in the Technical Department of the ‘Nelson Mandela Bay Multi Purpose Stadium’ project. This stadium is one of the stadiums that were built for the FIFA World Cup in 2010. It’s located in Port Elizabeth, a beautiful little harbour town in the Eastern Cape. Together with our joint venture partner Grinaker LTA we had to finish this project within the quality frame, in time and within budget. Keeping in mind that the South African government and the FIFA are watching every move, the pressure is on!

 
One of my tasks was to watch the performance of our own batching plant which produces 1400 m³ of concrete a week.

 
Together with the batch plant operators and the site manager we made supervised the quality and kept the concrete losses to a minimum. Another task was to make the work preparation and work procedures together with the site engineers and also to make sure that these procedures were properly executed. Here most of my time went in to the preparations for the roof structure.

 
Working with two big contractors with different backgrounds on such a world watched project and with a large multicultural team is a really exciting and educational experience. There are lots of learning opportunities as well as for the staff, the labour and the intern, both technical and on management level. You need to be flexible and proactive to reach your goals and be a team player your team can relay on. A challenging, exciting and beautiful internship period I really enjoyed!
 

Erik Kempers