The City of Cape Town’s Community Residential Upgrade (CRU) project has been awarded by the South African Institution of Civil Engineering (SAICE) as the most outstanding civil engineering achievement in the community-based projects category.
The CRU refurbishment project is a national programme implemented by municipalities to upgrade city rental housing units, as well as enhancing the living space around these homes.
At least 340 000 residents live in the City’s 43 500 housing units, but many of these were poorly maintained and the state of these living environments was contributing to serious social ills such as gangsterism, drug abuse, crime, and a lack of community pride and spirit.
As part of the national CRU Refurbishment Programme, the City identified 7 775 rental units in 11 areas across the metropole. The Kewtown upgrade, a pilot project in which 320 units were upgraded a year ago, was the first CRU project to be completed in the country.
Upgrades in Hanover Park, Heideveld, Ottery and The Range (Elsies River), have been partially completed, but all of these projects were entered as one unit for the purposes of the SAICE award.
The award considered not only the technical challenges such as project management and engineering, but also innovative problem solving. The complexity of dealing with community dynamics and the delivery of sustainable benefits and successful skills development to communities was another challenge. The team ensured that the success of the pilot project could be replicated to impact positively on the lives of even more Cape Town residents.
The City’s Housing Directorate and professional team, Aurecon, managed to align different funding sources and different City departments to deliver at the same time, and were able to remain within a tight budget of roughly R500 million.
“I would like to extend my heartfelt congratulations to the CRU project team for yet another auspicious award. This latest award celebrates our industry’s best practice, innovation to challenges, and dedication to project excellence,” said Mayoral Committee Member for Human Settlements, Councillor Ernest Sonnenberg.
“The real achievement and legacy, however, is community upliftment, which acts as a catalyst to provide new development opportunities for other historically disadvantaged communities,” Cllr Sonnenberg said.
