NEW ENGINEERING BUILDING SET TO ILLUMINATE ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE

WSU engineering students at the Buffalo City Campus (BCC) are primed for a brighter and significantly improved academic path thanks to a new state-of-the-art building designed to optimize the sun's direction, natural heating, and cooling.

Housed within the recently-established Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology (FEBEIT) at the BCC’s Potsdam Site, work on the R95 million infrastructure project commenced on 27 February 2024. This was due to a broader effort by Vice-Chancellor Prof Rushiella Songca to restore the dignity of its students through the building, renovation, and maintenance of new and pre-existing infrastructure.

“As a university, we had a challenging task of renovating rotting infrastructure, and building new infrastructure, including residences, computer labs, lecture halls, auditoriums, offices, and libraries, all in a bid to restore dignity to the plight of our students through the use of the legacy grant money previously given to us by DHET in years gone by,” said Songca.

The building itself boasts many great features, the least of which is a prominent central atrium that extends the length of the building, allowing natural light to illuminate the central circulation corridors. Voids in the first-floor slab are also designed to facilitate the passage of this natural light to the ground-floor level.

Additionally, clerestory windows above the office spaces permit natural light to penetrate both the circulation areas and the offices. The high-level monitors are strategically positioned, with some oriented towards the south and others towards the north. The north-facing monitors are equipped with shade louvers to mitigate direct sunlight, thereby minimizing glare in the workspaces.

“Furthermore, a solar system has been installed to support the building’s lower-capacity functions. This not only reduces operational costs but also ensures that the lecture spaces remain functional during electrical outages,” said WSU project manager, Ncumisa Ralarala.

Not all has been smooth sailing, however, thanks to several challenges that have arisen, including the initial removal of large boulders and rock, both on the surface and subterranean.

The abovementioned challenge saw the process of chemical splitting being employed as a key method to break the rocks in the way of the pile caps, down into manageable sizes for removal and transportation.

“Once the boulders were addressed and a level platform established, piling was carried out for the foundations to accommodate larger boulders that remained deeper in the ground or could not be removed,” said Ralarala.

The biggest and most significant challenge faced by the contractor, client, and consulting team however, was the condensed construction timeframe, which saw the project operated within a very tight schedule for both pre-construction and construction phases.

Rarala said the building was designed as an instructional tool in its physical form because the building will house lectures about engineering, the features of civil, structural, electrical, and mechanical were exposed in various areas where students can physically observe and study them. 

"The completion date scheduled for the project is 25 March 2025, and, at the end of which, a total of 83 general labourers and 6 local subcontractors from the area would have received jobs,” she said.

By Thando Cezula