The initial public works phase of the Baia de Luanda project should be completed by the beginning of this year, engineering and development consultant Smec reports.
When completed, the project will impact positively on the daily lives of the people of Luanda and it is expected to continue for several years as future stages begin. These stages include the construction of hotels and commercial and residential elements, states Smec CEO Tom Marshall.
The company, which won the 2012 Consulting Engineers South Africa Best International Project award in August, states that this project has changed the face of Luanda, enhanced the lives of local community members and returned a sense of pride to the city.
Smec was appointed as the lead consultant on the Baia de Luanda project, located along the Bay of Luanda, during the project’s inception in 2003. Prior to 2003, war-damaged infrastructure and socioeconomic problems were hugely debilitating for the country, states Marshall.
The company, together with Pintoroux Architects, was instrumental in initiating projects that could contribute towards restoring Luanda, as the capital of Angola, to its former state.
The first stage of the Baia de Luanda project, which comprises public works, was divided into civil and marine contracts and is nearing completion.
The initial construction tendered value was $126-million for Stage 1 in 2008, Marshall notes.
Part of this stage entailed marine and ecological studies, undertaken by project sponsor and consulting firm Vela VKE, marine engineering specialist PRDW and environmental firms CES and Scherman Colloty & Associates, to analyse the state of marine life in the bay. Specialists studied the different levels of marine life and deliberated over possible options that could be taken to clean, protect and nurture it, Marshall states.
Owing to the civil war, there was a massive influx of people to Luanda. The city, however, lacked the desired capacity to provide for them, resulting in large-scale pollution. People had a shortage of water, refuge and sewerage systems, states Marshall.
In addition, skilled workers who had technical expertise had emigrated to Portugal, leaving the country with minimal experienced individuals to operate and maintain infrastructure.
Angola was in a state of civil war for about 25 years, Marshall explains. The war was primarily a struggle for power between two former liberation movements, the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola. The war ended when the MPLA achieved victory in 2002.
Following this, the Angolan government was able to shift its expenditure from fighting a war to improving Angola’s infrastructure, states Marshall.
“The Bay of Luanda was highly polluted and, owing to inadequate sewerage infrastructure, the main outfall sewer around the bay was inoperative for about 25 years, resulting in the bay becoming seriously polluted,” Marshall points out.
All the sewage and sludge settled in the bay and it was unable to rehabilitate and clean itself. The project implemented a dredging solution, which allowed the bay to clean itself through tidal fluctuation.
To enable sustainable environ- mental repairs of the bay, some of the civil infrastructure on land, such as the stormwater and sewage drains, also had to be repaired to prevent pollution from recurring, Marshall notes.
Traffic congestion and parking problems also had to be solved. After a long consultation process with different government groups and interested parties, Smec convinced the Angolan government to consider a public–private partnership.
The agreement was to create new land parcels in the dredging process for new developments and new land for infrastructure such as roads to provide traffic solutions.
“We created five new land parcels around the city. The agreement between private financier Finicapital and the Angolan government was that Finicapital would finance the rehabilitation of the bay and the infrastructure development and, in turn, it would obtain concessions to develop the new land parcels.