Beginning to burn out?
Inside the Consolidated Infrastructure trainwreck
The fast-growing firm denies that it is in trouble, but says it will take ruthless steps to change its business model
If it feels as if you’ve seen this movie before, you probably have. In its own words, Consolidated Infrastructure Group (CIG) "grew too hard, too fast", making the same mistakes that have devastated other construction companies in the brutal post-2010 World Cup years. CEO Raoul Gamsu blames project delays in the company’s power-generation division, Conco, tendering at unrealistic margins and poor commercial management for the firm’s R150m full-year loss, which was finally revealed to the market last week after a series of increasingly grim trading updates. "I think we should have known; we should have had greater insight," he says. "If you look at all of us — Basil Read, Murray & Roberts, Aveng — when you get to these engineering projects it is very hard to know what the final outcome will be. It’s just the nature of the work."In particular, CIG appears to have bitten off more than it could chew on a multiyear grid infrastructure upgrade around Addis Ababa for Ethiopia’s power utili...
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