Reclon Consultants joins Intela as mechanical and electrical partner

Intela Research

6 min read

For readers who track our work rather than our announcements, the more useful framing is this: the mechanical and electrical scope is where development programmes are most often lost, and we have chosen to stop treating it as something procured at the end of a design process.

Why M&E, and why now

On a modern residential scheme, mechanical and electrical services typically account for a fifth to a third of construction cost. On a solar plant, they account for effectively all of it. A photovoltaic project is not a building with equipment inside it; it is equipment, with a small amount of civil work holding it up. The distinction matters, because it determines who has to be in the room when the important decisions are made.

The conventional developer model treats M&E as a downstream trade. Architecture and structure are settled, a budget line is carried, and the services engineer is appointed to design within it. This works when the building is simple and the grid is reliable. It works poorly in Zimbabwe, where the grid is neither, and where the electrical strategy, standby, solar, storage, metering, the point of connection, now determines whether a completed asset is lettable at all.

Knight Frank’s Zimbabwe research made the point plainly in its H2 2024 market update: new development projects do not readily obtain power on completion unless an alternative source is provided, and a number of new and existing developments are switching to solar and gas as a result.¹ Power is no longer a servicing detail. It is a valuation input. A scheme that cannot demonstrate energy resilience at handover carries a discount, whatever its finishes.

That is the case for bringing engineering capability inside the origination process rather than appointing it afterwards.

Who Reclon are

Reclon Consulting Engineers has practised in Zimbabwe since 1995. It is a member firm of the Engineering Council of Zimbabwe, operating from offices in the Bulawayo central business district and in Harare, with a team of more than eighteen engineers, technicians and support staff across three divisions: electrical and electronic engineering, mechanical engineering, and project management.

The firm was founded by, and is still led by, two professional engineers with more than thirty years of consulting experience each. Engineer Cleophas Dube, a professional electrical engineer, heads the electrical engineering and project management divisions. Engineer Regis Bhunu, a professional mechanical engineer, heads the mechanical division.

The portfolio is a reasonable proxy for the technical range of the Zimbabwean built environment over three decades. In commercial and institutional work: the POTRAZ head office, the World Bank country office in Harare, the Tobacco Industry Marketing Board building, ARIPO, Riverwalk Shopping Mall and the Joina Centre. In retail: Kamfinsa Shopping Mall for First Mutual and Montague Shopping Mall for the Local Authority Pension Fund. In industry: the Coca-Cola PET plant on Bon Accord Road, and Delta’s packaging and carbon dioxide plants at Belmont in Bulawayo. In financial services: Barclays House, Steward Bank Bulawayo, Bank ABC and Stanbic Ngezi.

The healthcare and education record is deeper still, Gokwe District Hospital, Lupane Provincial Hospital, Ekusileni Medical Centre, the Bulawayo Orthopaedic Centre, and the national audit and database of mechanical and electrical services across every central, provincial and district hospital in the country. In education: Midlands State University, Solusi University, Africa University, Lupane University student hostels, the IDBZ student accommodation centre in Bulawayo, and seventeen primary and secondary schools delivered under the OPEC Fund for International Development.

On renewables, the firm has designed and supervised solar installations including a photovoltaic plant at Africa University, and works with clients across solar electrical, solar water heating and green building services.

How the joint venture works

The arrangement is an unincorporated contractual joint venture, with each individual project undertaken through a ring-fenced special purpose vehicle. Capital contributions, costs, liabilities and profits are shared equally. Governance sits with a management committee of two representatives from each firm, meeting quarterly, with reserved matters requiring unanimity. The initial term is ten years.

The division of responsibility is deliberate and, we think, unambiguous:

Intela leads origination, land assembly and acquisition, master planning and development management, commercial and financial structuring, the raising and administration of debt and equity, sales, marketing and investor relations, regulatory and planning consents, and long-term asset management. Intela remains the single point of operational accountability to funders and counterparties.

Reclon leads engineering design and technical specification, plant and building engineering, grid-interface engineering on energy projects, project management and programme control, construction-phase technical assurance, the preparation and administration of EPC documentation, and independent technical review.

That last item is worth dwelling on. In most development structures, the party certifying progress for drawdown purposes is either the contractor or a consultant appointed by the contractor. Under this arrangement, Reclon certifies progress for stage payments as a principal with capital at risk in the outcome. A partner who owns half the downside is a more exacting certifier than a fee-earning consultant.

What it applies to

Two workstreams are adopted into the venture with immediate effect.

The first is Project Landau Village, the 34-unit gated townhouse scheme on Park Road in Bulawayo’s Suburbs precinct, where the two firms have already worked together through planning and technical design.

The second is the utility-scale solar pipeline. Intela’s national solar land bank of approximately 130 hectares is made available to the venture for project origination. Reclon leads plant specification, single-line and grid-interface engineering, and battery storage specification, together with commissioning oversight. Intela leads the ZERA generation licensing, environmental authorisation, grid connection and wheeling approvals, and any application for prescribed asset status.

The honest assessment

A joint venture is not a synergy. It is a set of obligations, and it carries costs.

Equal governance with unanimity on reserved matters is slower than sole control. It is a deliberate trade: we accept slower decisions in return for decisions that have survived technical challenge before capital is committed. Deadlock provisions exist, and we would rather have needed them than not had them.

Exclusivity also binds. Each party must bring qualifying opportunities to the venture before pursuing them independently. That narrows optionality on both sides. We judged it a reasonable price for the alignment it buys.

And engineering capability does not remove execution risk; it relocates it. Programme slippage, cost escalation and grid connection delay remain the material exposures on every project we underwrite. What changes is when we find out about them.

*Reclon Consulting Engineers (Private) Limited trades as Reclon Consultants and is a member firm of the Engineering Council of Zimbabwe. Company information is drawn from the Reclon company profile.*

¹ Knight Frank, *The Zimbabwe Market Update, H2 2024*, page 6.

Intela Land & Property has formalised its collaboration with Reclon Consulting Engineers (Private) Limited into a joint venture covering both of our divisions, real estate development and renewable energy, across Zimbabwe.