At Johannesburg-based AVL
Solutions, successful project
management is all about
hands-on control and effective
design that ultimately save costs.
It’s what made the difference
when the company was appointed
to bring in the rails for the
Gautrain project several years
ago – and it’s a formula that has
continued to pay dividends, says
AVL’s Bruce Riley.
“With the Gautrain project, the
exporter wanted all rails in one
shipment. Having identified the
supply chain constraint as the
Durban port, we visited the factory
in France and demonstrated
how port storage costs could
be minimised through shipping
smaller quantities, allowing a more
streamlined supply chain of rails
to the ultimate distribution point in
Johannesburg.
“We like to get involved in the
design issues at the outset and
establish where the bottlenecks
will be,” Riley told FTW.
The company was established in
2006 by partners Terry Bantock,
Grant Cox and Riley, and has
evolved over the years, he said.
Apart from the Gautrain,
AVL has been involved in the
NMPP pipeline project between
Johannesburg and Durban.
“We designed vehicles with a
higher payload that could carry
more pipes than competing
tenders – which once again saved
the client on costs and won us a
portion of the contract.”
While there has been no let-up
in the number of enquiries for
project work for which AVL has
tendered over the past year, not
many of these have materialised.
“But it’s an area that we are keen
to grow,” he said.
One sector that is on an
upward spiral, however, is bulk
minerals. “We’re involved in the
warehousing and packing of bulk
minerals for export and recently
started running bulk minerals into
Maputo port,” he told FTW.
CAPTION
Bruce Riley … ‘looking to move into
Africa.’
