Sandton's skyline bricked by Ocon

The suburb of Sandton, often referred to as the ‘richest square mile in Africa’, continues to attract commercial and residential developments such as Central Square, a multi-billion rand mixed-use development, which commenced construction in December 2015, and is due for completion mid-2017.

“Sandton has grown so much over the last five years, yet the challenges facing civil engineers is much the same today as it was then, and that is the width of streets and the shortage of product storage space on site. This makes the need for stock delivery scheduling a critical ‘just-in-time’ requirement. This is why Ocon Brick was selected to supply the clay stock bricks required for the Central Square development’ said Shawn Herbst, Site Agent for the Mota-engil construction company.

“With the narrow roads of Morningside, Sandton, needing to enable as much traffic flow-through as possible, causing congestion with large trucks loaded with hundreds of brick pallets needing to be offloaded was not an option. Not only did we have extremely little delivery and storage space for this kind of product supply, as the Central Square development grew, we also, at times, had to move 24,000 clay stock bricks up to the next level of construction.”

Herbst said “We chose Ocon Brick because we knew their clay stock bricks to be of a high quality and that the Ocon Brick team would be available to us, even at short notice, as we micro-managed crucial product delivery schedules to meet the restraints at site that we had explained to them. I could phone Ocon Brick on a Tuesday for a 6am delivery the next day, and the bricks would be there waiting as ordered. It is that kind of team work that we sought and received for the Central Square site.”

Ocon Brick supplied 5, 208,000 for the Central Square apartment blocks, “Which when completed will offer a spectacular view over the Sandton horizon” said Lucas Steyn, Ocon Brick’s consultant to the Central Square project. “The project is 52% complete; there are another nine floors to be constructed on the tower with 17,000 square meters of concrete parking decks still to be completed.”

“We were aware of the severe delivery restraints associated with this project and that numerous articulated delivery trucks and vans could not be accommodated at the same time alongside site. We are fortunate that due to our large manufacturing capability we are able to hold sufficient stock at any given point in time enabling us to meet our customer’s specific time-critical delivery requirements. In the case of Mota-engil, we believe we managed to ensure that the brick pallets were delivered to site when and as they needed them so that they could remain on schedule with this development” said Steyn.

Ocon Brick was selected for both phases of the Central Square project, The Retail area  and the Central Square Apartment blocks.

The Ocon Brick clay stock range offers characteristics such as: fire resistance; superior thermal insulation; low carbon footprint; acoustic properties; low water absorption and ease of handling. The company can manufacture close to one million bricks per day in a normal shift at their plant at Three Rivers, Meyerton.

Ocon Brick is part of the IS Group of companies, home to Rocla and Technicrete ISG.