CAPE TOWN’s Victoria and Alfred (V&A) 123 hectare working harbour is internationally rated by other harbour developers as one of the finest of its kind, and if glowing media accolades are believed, so did most of the 24 million V&A visitors last year.

No wonder, then, that the V&A’s planning and external projects division’s services are sought after by new and existing developments throughout the world, eager to learn from the Mother City’s success.

V&A MD Derick van der Merwe says the consulting arm has gained invaluable experience working on its own mixed-use waterfront development. It now charges up to R10m a job to share the secrets of profitably retaining a working harbour role. In the V&A’s case this ranges from fishing fleet berths and factories, through to facilities for the world’s cruising industry, while incorporating visitor attractions, such as an aquarium, upmarket apartments, hotels, shops, restaurants, museums, and theatres.

Van der Merwe says it has quoted on work in Thessalonica and Athens, and in Glasgow, and he is confident that it will be accepted.

“We have also hosted a delegation of developers, managers, and politicians from Perth, and I’d be very surprised if we did not get a call from them soon. It would be a very big contract.”

But van der Merwe is used to working with big numbers. The V&A has cost around R4.5bn, and growing. A daunting amount, but justified as revenue steams towards the R2.4bn mark for 2005. The V&A’s learning, acquired since 1988 when the first MD David Jack began transform-ing a hulk-ing wreck into a streamlined profit machine, has lead to the consul-ting team assisting projects both lo-cally and throughout the world.

These in-clude Port Vell (Bar-celona), Cardiff (Wales), The Sey-chelles, Portsmouth (UK), Port Louis (Mauritius), Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain. It has also launched itself into the old Soviet Union, teaming up with several other international consultants on the Gelendzhik project, a resort town on the Black Sea.

One waterfront development aspect that tends to be overlooked in the early planning stages is the need for a tight working relationship between authorities and developers, says van der Merwe.

“Besides the obvious skills of strategic, architectural and environment planning, conceptualisation, financial and investment feasibility, as well as selling and marketing, we have come to realise that unless government and developers are in perfect harmony, as they pretty much were at the V&A, then all parties face a challenging time.”

“We have developed a model that analyses any existing or potential conflict areas, then steadily edges all parties to a win-win outcome.”
The team’s knowledge continues to grow exponentially, says van der Merwe. It is in regular contact with what has become an extensive network of like-minded international associates. It also visits most of the emerging projects, as well as monitoring progress on the existing ones.
The use of canals is a speciality of the consulting team. In the V&A’s case it not only links the harbour to the city, but it also enables the V&A to expand its waterfront accommodation, and proximity to water really boosts the rental price.

Nowhere is this more obvious than Sol Kerzner’s R500m One&Only Hotel, perched on a man-made island in the middle of a man-made harbour.
It’s not only the V&A own team that is using the success story to drive on new venture. So too are most of the consulting companies on the V&A project.

All have set up international consulting arms and the likes of GAPP (architects and urban design), Entech (civil engineering), Planning Partners (regional planning, urban design, landscape architecture and environmental planning), Stauch Vorster (architects) and MLC (quantity surveying) are becoming familiar names on site boards from Dubai to Darwin, and soon Perth?

Publisher: Cape Business News
Source: Cape Business News