Good foundations succeed
PHUMZA Mlaba, 34, project manager of the Glebelands Hostel development team which won a top award in the Department of Human Settlements’s Govan Mbeki awards recently, has overcome gender stereotypes to succeed in the construction industry.
Mlaba, a project manager at Motheo Construction’s KwaZuluNatal branch in Pinetown, said it had been a challenge being a black woman working in a traditionally male-dominated field.
“Most men in the industry initially think that if you are a woman you have to be an admin person, so if you are on site you have to be a site clerk,” Mlaba said.
“At site meetings the men expected me to take the minutes, but I learned that when you take the minutes you are in control, because everyone is talking about what you have written down. I take them by choice now,” Mlaba said.
Mlaba matriculated at Inanda Secondary and went on to do a diploma in business administration at Midrand University (now Midrand Graduate Institute) in Johannesburg, but she had a lot to learn about construction when she landed her first job as a junior project manager with Motheo Construction in 2005.
The BEE company employs 200 people nationally and 40 people in KZN, as well as up to 300 sub-contracted labourers on development projects.
“I had to learn everything from scratch because I was coming from a business background, so I had to go to the site and stayed on site for quite a long time to learn the industry.
“Initially, it was very hard, there was a lot of information to take in and as a woman you feel you have to catch up to the men who have been in the industry for a long time,” Mlaba said.
Her job entails sourcing new business by either tendering for projects or assessing community needs and proposing potential development packages to local and provincial government.
Mlaba said she was surprised the Glebelands project had won the award for the best community residential unit because it had been a basic project, but she added it was probably the quality of work that made it a winner.
The project also clearly changed the social landscape of hostel living and left a legacy by up-skilling residents.
“We cut up the hostel blocks which had a community bathroom and kitchen, and made them into units so workers could bring their families to live with them,” she said.
Out of the existing hostel blocks on site, the firm created 120 units and it built new residential units on the site to house 300 families in total.
“Thirty percent of the workers that we used on the project were local women who we trained in construction skills like painting, plastering and block work. We also trained them in business skills to teach them how to run their own businesses, how to invoice and how to recruit staff so they knew what to look for when hiring people,” she said.
The company also built a crèche to accommodate 30 to 60 children.
In future, Mlaba hopes to see the firm expanding its local development services beyond subsidised housing.
“We have people who can afford to pay something for houses, so we should be moving in the direction of developments where people are renting to own instead of waiting for the government to give them housing,” she said.