...corporate tragicomedy played out in public. Neither has been replaced, although executives still on the job are going about their business. Acting Chairman Mpho Makwana says the utility is ready for the World Cup, which starts in June. Finance Director Paul O’Flaherty says the utility might go to bond markets to close its funding gap.

If the finances seem settled at present but murky for the long-term, work on the ground at Medupi appears to be proceeding smoothly. The job is fully staffed, with a workforce of about 8,000. Program manager PB Power, a unit of U.S. multinational engineering-construction consultant Parsons Brinckerhoff, is coordinating project construction and commercial management under 38 separate contract pieces. Another U.S. firm, Black and Veatch International, is acting in a similar capacity at Kusile.

After being out of the powerplant construction game for more than 20 years, Eskom thought bringing in off-shore expertise was the smartest approach. “We didn’t have the depth to manage 102, 103 individual contract packages,” he says, “and going the EPC [engineer-procure-construct] route doesn’t really save money. The contractor just computes the risk and charges it back to [Eskom].”

Program manager PB is also acting in a secondary role, resolving disputes and claims as a FIDIC engineer,” Crookes says. (“FIDIC” is a French acronym for Federation of Consulting Engineers.) FIDIC features contracts that are frequently used in complex, technology-based design-build, EPC/turnkey or design-build-operate projects.

Boots on the ground

Hans Van Winkle, PB’s on-site project manager, describes the job as running a very large schedule- and budget-driven program with many moving parts. He is well suited for the assignment, having served for 32 years in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and retiring as the major general in charge of civil works.

Some of the work is similar to commanding an Army base, with an Africa twist: the perimeter fence must be baboon-proof, and a snake-wrangler regularly relocates vipers off-site. Coexisting with reptiles is not always easy in the bush. A tour of the nearby town of Lephale, where most of the Medupi workforce lives, shows housing that is mostly new and orderly—brick houses with manicured lawns, typical subdivisions indicative of a megaproject’s collateral benefits. But on the edge of town in a ramshackle settlement camp where housing consists of plastic tents, a driver relates that a venomous mamba intruded the previous weekend, with a deadly effect: “Three bites, three dead,” he said.

Early project tasks included relocating a large baobab tree and building a game trail for creatures displaced by construction. A large part of the job involves being a responsible neighbor. “We had to build our own sewer system,” Van Winkle says. “We were overwhelming Lephale.” The project also built its own dedicated telecommunications system, so personnel at Eskom offices in Johannesburg can stay in touch with managers and contractors at the jobsite.

Contractors upgraded the road system to accommodate the more than 200 trucks per day that supply the site and built 900 housing units in Lephale for project staff.

On-site, foundation work was one of the first challenges. The terrain’s bedrock sloped downward toward the first unit. Extensive blasting and concrete placement to provide a uniform foundation took care of that, Van Winkle says. One advantage of building at a remote site is the abundance of space for equipment and materiel. “At one time, I counted 30 cranes on this site,” says Van Winkle.

Although there are 38 contract packages divided among about 300 contractors and subcontractors, Van Winkle...