South Africa’s national road infrastructure provides a fundamental network that delivers a wide range of economic and social benefits. Adequately maintaining road infrastructure is imperative and essential to preserving and enhancing those benefits. Bakwena N1N4 toll concessionaire’s commercial manager, Liam Clarke, explains why this is more cost effective and saves millions of Rands in the medium to long term.
While it might seem over simplified, maintaining a road works on exactly the same principles as maintaining your home. If you don’t regularly maintain it, your dream home can turn into a nightmare.
Every home experiences maintenance issues of varying degrees at some point or another. The reality is that these repairs need to be done regularly in order to maintain a home properly. It can be overwhelming and even daunting to do everything all at once but the good news is that keeping everything under control by meticulously following a plan to prevent and repair damage timeously, means it can be easily managed and costeffectively achieved. This is called routine/preventive maintenance and is achieved by creating a checklist of jobs and performing these activities regularly without excuse.
As the custodians of the Bakwena N1N4 Platinum highway, we practice routine/preventative maintenance to keep the roads that we are responsible for in a condition that ensures the safety of all road users. If cracks and potholes were left unrepaired, it would not be long before these would become a dangerous obstacle for unsuspecting motorists which could result in serious accidents.
Going into winter, homeowners should be checking gutters and roofs to see if the paint is peeling, because winter is the perfect time to paint gutters before the summer rains and the leaks start. Similarly, we know our roads will have taken a beating over the summer period with damage caused when the rain comes and gets into the cracks; so the winter months are ideal for carrying out repairs before the next summer rains.
As such Bakwena is conducting a reseal program on the N4 west from the M17 Garankuwa interchange to the R24 in Rustenburg. As always, we are doing our utmost to complete the project as timeously as possible without compromising the effectiveness of the procedure.
The importance of maintenance cannot be over emphasised. When funded appropriately and managed well, maximum value is achieved. While, inadequate levels of investment or poor management of the road network will have serious consequences for South Africa’s economy and social wellbeing.
Think about a home maintenance crisis and being stuck unprepared, surprised, and scrambling for quick fix solutions which often cost a small fortune. It could have easily been avoided if the problem was identified and attended to when it was first noticed.
Similarly, Bakwena leaves nothing to chance. Our annual inspection programme is meticulous to ensure defects are identified and remedial action taken so that expensive reconstruction can be avoided.
