Leading engineering consultancy, GladAfrica Group announced the acquisition of Ariya Project Managers. Since its establishment in 2005, Ariya has delivered a number of South Africa’s high-profiled and prestigious infrastructure projects and exemplifies the ability of empowered companies to meet the rigorous challenges in the local built environment.
The acquisition gears GladAfrica to be the largest 100% black-owned consultancy group in Southern Africa. According to GladAfrica’s executive chairman, Noel Mashaba, “We wanted to create a completely African-born organisation within the built environment, while realising our vision of creating life-changing built-environment solutions. The Group will now operate and offer all full services from all nine provinces in South Africa with a strengthened project management capacity and the ability to further customise our comprehensive selection of project management services.”
Noel Mashaba: executive chairman (right), Kulani Curtis Lebese: Group CEO (middle) and Sigi Naidoo: Ariya Project Managers (left).
Ariya is wholly black-owned with a 35% black women shareholding, as well as a level 2 B-BBEE and an international ISO 9001: 2008 accreditation.
While GladAfrica will retain its Engineering Consulting arm, the Group will establish a new specialised company to focus primarily on project management services, including development management, tenant coordination and installation and procurement management. Ariya’s current managing director, Sigi Naidoo, will continue as managing director of the new entity.
Given the solid track records of both companies in the industry and their similar work ethic and cultural fit, the new team is set to offer the local and regional markets exciting alternative, value-added services. Ariya’s notable list of recent projects include the MyCity BRT in Cape Town, Green Point Stadium and the University of Mpumalanga.
According to Naidoo, “We embraced this opportunity to join the GladAfrica team in a joint pursuance of delivering innovative engineering and project management solutions. I have no doubt that together we will create a notable force in the built environment consulting sector.”
