When the founders of SRK Consulting started the business 50 years ago in Johannesburg, they applied their stamp of innovation from day one. The company has redefined this focus as times changed, giving us a leading role in applying sustainability thinking across all our engineering and scientific disciplines.
Innovation was not necessarily a buzzword in the 1980s, but Oskar Steffen, Andy Robertson and Hendrik Kirsten formed a mining consultancy when the very idea was novel. South Africa's mining houses were the pillar of the economy and invariably employed all their own experts. Nonetheless, these three engineers believed they had yet more value to add and were proved correct, as the company steadily grew both locally and abroad. Among the many innovations developed and embraced by SRK was our early recognition that environmental and social aspects of engineering were vital to project success. Indeed, we may have been the first consulting engineering firm in the country to bring a social scientist on board — as early as the 1990s.
Integrating Disciplines
However, adding new disciplines to the team was not in itself the achievement, as these skill sets are only useful insofar as they can contribute towards managing clients’ risk and building sustainability into their business model. The real innovation only starts when you get the right professionals together; they then need to find effective ways of integrating their insights to create the best solution for the job. This has really been the story of SRK’s first 50 years and is likely to be an ongoing theme. Among the fields in which the company established its early reputation was in tailings management, where its geotechnical expertise is highly regarded.
Link to online journal - Issue 64, article on pages 46-47.
