Civil Engineering September 2021 | Vol 29 No 8

of Transport until he retired. During this time, Malcolm spent around 14 years working on road pavements, construction quality control, planning and program- ming for national roads, and financial management until he was eventually pro- moted to Chief Engineer for roads. After about five years he was promoted again, this time to Deputy Director-General re- sponsible for all land transportation in the country – a position he held for nine years. Shortly after retirement, Malcolm completed a short stint as a technical advisor to the Minister of Transport before returning to KwaZulu-Natal where he established a small consulting company. In this role he performed research for the CSIR, provided specialist advice, adjudicated construction disputes, mentored young engineers, served as a planning commissioner for the Durban City Planning Commission, worked as a post-graduate examiner at the Universities of KwaZulu-Natal, Johannesburg and Pretoria, and served as Executive Director of the South African Road Federation (SARF) for just over a decade. Malcolm says the most enjoyable part of his career was the time he spent working on construction. “I believe that to be a com- plete engineer and get full satisfaction from the job you have to have spent a number of years actually building something. You can’t sit in an office designing all your life.” The location of new routes and national roads was another immensely interesting and rewarding part of Malcolm’s career. “Together with a col- league I was given the job of finding a new route across the Drakensburg and we spent about six to nine months exploring the Drakensburg trying to find the best crossing. We eventually came up with De Beer’s Pass,” explains Malcolm. “The most rewarding thing is seeing a project you have worked on come to frui- tion. It is quite gratifying to drive around the country and see a section of road I was involved in being used and operated. The Huguenot Tunnel in the Cape is a particu- larly rewarding example of a project where I had a large input during its construction, though the initial design was by others.” CAREER ACHIEVEMENTS Malcolm considers his involvement as part of the SAR&H team responsible for the Boughton-Cedara tunnels as a major career highlight and achievement. He also played a large role in developing financing approaches for roads, including toll roads, and was invited to present to the World Bank on the topic. Furthermore, during his time as Deputy Director-General Malcolm promoted the privatisation of the roads industry and was one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the South African National Roads Agency Limited (SANRAL). The idea behind SANRAL was to establish an entity responsible for roads outside of government – which was losing a great deal of experienced engineers at the time – based on a New Zealand model. Over the course of his career Malcolm has received a number of awards, three of which he considers more significant than the others. The first was a SAICE award for outstanding contributions to the transport engineering profession, the second was a CSIR award for contributions to transport research, and the third was a SARF award for services to the roads sector. Over the years Malcolm has mentored about 30 young engineers from graduation to professional registration – something he considers a major achievement. “It is incredibly rewarding to see people develop over the years and watch them grow and change.” However, Malcolm stresses the importance of understanding mentees’ personal lives and challenges. It’s not just about teaching them engineering, he says. Malcolm also thoroughly enjoys writing and has published two PhDs, written approximately 100 papers, authored three books, two of which two have been pub- lished, and compiled his family history. DEFINING INFLUENCERS While Malcolm has certainly enjoyed a successful and prolific career, he believes that a few select individuals played de- fining roles in shaping that career. The earliest was his first boss, Norman Schmidt, who ran the tunnelling project he worked on for SAR&H. “The whole project was done inhouse and at the time Norman was the best tunneller in the country and well-known internationally. He taught me a great deal and one of his key lessons was learning to make decisions, because if you can’t make decisions, you can’t be an engineer – a wrong decision is better than no decision,” says Malcolm. At the same time, Malcolm says he learnt a great deal from two of the tunnel foremen working on the project, Hendrick Benn and Johann Windt. “Young Civil Engineering September 2021 15 One of the Garden Route’s famous arch bridges under construction The EB Cloete Interchange, Africa’s first four-level interchange