Civil Engineering April 2021 | Vol 29 No 3

“While it seemed daunting at the time, working on projects like these has been fantastic, because you are forced to think uniquely when you are faced with unique problems. Being given those outlier tasks has certainly been a tremendous advantage in my life,” he says. Kelvin went on to list some of his career highlights, which include travelling through the USA and UK in 1987 thanks to the Blackwood Hodge scholarship for post graduate geotechnical experience. During brief stints with federal and private organisa- tions, his mind was opened to the benefit of direct communica- tion and intense competitive approaches to design and construc- tion for optimum cost-benefit ratio. A couple of years later he was invited to participate in a work- shop for world experts on plastics in engineering held in Krems, Austria in 1989, where he led the discussion on geotextile filters and debated geosynthetic durability based on South African experiences in canal lining and balancing dam lining. WORKING FOR THE PEOPLE Kelvin has fond memories of the engineers and other profes- sionals with whom he has worked during large dam develop- ments, in particular the archaeologists and social scientists through whom he learnt a deep insight and sincere respect for local customs in regions of KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Vhembe, and the Northern Cape. The advance of trust and mu- tual care between developer and affected persons has been par- ticularly awe-inspiring in rural areas, leading to participation in cultural activities otherwise unknown to his urban development. Working with the people living in these areas, learning a smattering of their languages, and providing them with services is something Kelvin has found immensely rewarding. He recalls a touching story of a woman who walked to town to get someone to help her write a letter of thanks to him. “For her, every cent mat- tered but she bought a R2 stamp to post a letter to me – things like that are real right sizing events in your life,” he says. “I have been so deeply touched by the thanks I’ve received from people, which most often comes from the poorest of the poor,” he adds, recalling an elderly man who walked several kilometres to bring Kelvin a watermelon he had grown as thanks for Kelvin and his team building him a new home two years earlier when he had to be relocated to accommodate a new dam basin. Kelvin was also given the great honour of helping a family exhume their relative for relocation during a dam project. EARLY CAREER INFLUENCES According to Kelvin, many see his work at DWS as being hydraulic driven, but his strength lies more in soil mechanics, and much of the work he has done has been a combination of hydraulics and geotechnics. “So much of our geotechnical engineering is in re- sponse to hydraulic problems and having an understanding of both puts one in a very privileged position to find unique solutions.” He believes his early experiences put him on a path that was always going to entail both hydraulic and geotechnical engineering. After high school Kelvin got a job working for Professor Desmond Midgley who headed the University of the Witwatersrand’s Hydrological Research Unit. At the age of 17 Kelvin was made responsible for collecting the rain gauge station data of the Witwatersrand that was used by Bill Pitman for his well-known hydrological models. “I received great exposure to students doing their PhDs, and working in the building at Wits overlooking the soils lab it was inevitable that it was where I would end up,” he says. During his time working at Wits, Kelvin was noticed by Professor Jeremiah Jennings, the then head of the Wits Civil Engineering Department, who invited him to observe the soil Kelvin feeling a patch of soil that differs from the general surrounding material at a construction site 14 April 2021  Civil Engineering Kelvin using his monocular at the De Hoop Dam site