Company Announcement - GIBB, South Africa’s largest black-owned multi-disciplinary engineering consulting firm, has announced the acquisition of environmental solutions consultancy, Strategic Environmental Focus. The transaction ushers in South Africa’s strongest environmental offering in the engineering fraternity. GIBB Group CEO, Richard Vries, described the move as a great milestone, not just for GIBB and SEF, but for the entire South African Environmental Services Industry. “Developing infrastructure alone is not sustainable without rigorous environmental measures and both firms have built their reputation on standards of excellence. With this great marriage of minds, our clients can now look forward to comprehensive solutions delivered by some of the most talented professionals in the country,” he said.

According to GIBB Environmental Services Sector General Manager Dr Urishanie Govender, the acquisition more than doubles the size of GIBB’s environmental team. “We are now able to position the broader group to deliver world-class environmental solutions using professional environmentalists, auditors, green design experts and specialists with sufficient capacity to develop a customised, comprehensive and complete range of solutions for clients,” she said. “The combined firms will result in a fully integrated environmental team, with more than 60 environmental practitioners being part of the GIBB Group’s approximately 950 staff,”  she continued.

For GIBB, SEF’s established African footprint aligns with the firm’s expansion into Africa. SEF has completed an extensive range of projects across South Africa; Angola; Botswana; Kenya; DRC; Cameroon, Ghana, Morocco, Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland. The 18-year-old firm caught the attention of GIBB as the firm continues to grow in stature and capacity through, among other approaches, major acquisitions. Last year GIBB acquired 70% of one of the largest architectural firms in Africa, SVA International.

GIBB’s Group Business Development Executive, Muzi Siyaya said that “value enhancing acquisitions pursued simultaneously with a strong organic growth focus will continue to be at the core of the Group’s strategy and the SEF acquisition certainly fits in with our strategy to broaden service offerings in mature markets to drive growth”. The engagement will see former SEF staff provide their skills to several mega-projects currently underway, strengthening GIBB’s already impressive presence in the Environmental industry.

Former SEF CEO, Dave Rudolph described the move as “a major development for the environmental sector”. “We have a passionate team, who are solution-orientated and proactive in their approach to sustainable solutions to the pressing needs of an ever-developing world. By working with GIBB, there is just so much more value that we can offer in terms of proactive delivery of products and projects.”

“The time to move on was ideal since environmental legislation was recently passed allowing environmental impact assessments  to be undertaken as part of large engineering teams, with external peer review,” said Rudolph. Rudolph said that with the latest change in 2014, authorities have recognised the value add of professionalism and self-regulation. “Environment is also no longer something which can be seen as an add on service and having a clear understanding to environmental constraints at the on-set of a project is critical,” he added.

In addition to GIBB’s existing broad range environmental service offerings, the combined offering now includes vegetation; hydrology; wetlands, ecological and landscape architectural services.