NAKES terrifying the workers, the threat of wild elephants dismantling pipes and temperatures close to 120 degrees are just some of the challenges Ray Sergeant had to deal with in the African construction industry.

After that, building in Bermuda should be a breeze for Mr. Sergeant, who has moved to the island to work for Bermuda Project Managers Ltd., ending a stint of more than 30 years working in three African countries.

The 62-year-old registered quantity surveyor is looking to put experience gained on building everything from city skyscrapers to lodges in the bush to good use on Bermuda construction projects.

After starting out in his native New Zealand, Mr. Sergeant moved to work on a wide variety of construction jobs in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana.

His curriculum vitae includes the spectacular 29-storey, cylindrical glass tower in Harare that is the headquarters of the Zimbabwe Reserve Bank. He has also been involved in the building of the new University of Port Elizabeth campus in South Africa, as well as multi-million-dollar shopping malls, residential housing developments and even a maximum security prison.

But he faced perhaps the most testing circumstances for construction work when building safari lodges far from any settlement. One of those developments was on the Bubi River in Zimbabwe, close to the South African border and another was in Botswana, in the Okavango Delta.

?Building safari lodges in the Bush certainly makes you see a different aspect of construction,? Mr. Sergeant said. ?In the city, if you need an angle grinder, you can ring up someone and get one inside half an hour.

?But when you?re 600 kilometres from the nearest population centre and you?re only getting deliveries every week or ten days, you have to be inventive, taking bits off machines to keep other machines going.?

In Botswana, his projects faced the added challenges of severe heat and wild creatures.

?The temperature often got up into the high 40s Celsius (115-120 Fahrenheit) and, of course, production goes down,? Mr. Sergeant said.

?We?d normally start work at 6 a.m., work until 12 noon and then take a break until 2 p.m. And then work until about 7 p.m.

?There?s not a lot you can do about the heat, except to ensure that you have a good supply of fresh water. The portacabins are air-conditioned. The one good thing is that it?s a dry heat in Botswana, as it?s a land-locked country and most of it is part of the Kalahari Desert.

?One of the scariest parts about working in the bush was the snakes. If you had cement bags stacked up in a room, snakes would like to get in behind them because it?s warm and comfortable there.

?So you could take out a few bags and suddenly see this thing appear and everybody exits! If we couldn?t get the snake to come out, then eventually a guy would have to go in with a shovel and bash it over the head.?

When building a lodge near the Bubi River, the construction plans had to take into account potential destructive elements among the local four-legged residents.

?People tended to forget that there were wild animals around,? Mr. Sergeant said. ?We had to be very careful about putting water services into the ground, because if they weren?t deep enough, elephants would be able to smell the water and they?d tear it all up to get at it.

?Zimbabwe was in the middle of a very dry spell at the time. But a short time after we finished the project, the rain really came down and it washed out half the camp!?

Mr. Sergeant said the standard of workmanship in Africa was high and on a par with elsewhere in the world.

He has been impressed by what he has seen of Bermuda in his first six weeks on the island and he is keen to contribute as the island goes through a continuing construction boom.

Mr. Sergeant is a member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, among other prestigious professional bodies.

?The principles of quantity surveying are the same wherever you go in the world,? Mr. Sergeant said. ?But each country and each company has its own different way of doing it. So I will keep on learning.?

Outside work, he is an ultra-marathon runner, whose tally of marathons runs into double figures and who has completed the Two Oceans 56K (34.8 miles) race in South Africa for the last five consecutive years.

The run follows one of the world?s most spectacular road race routes, out from Cape Town to both Atlantic and Indian Ocean coastline at the southern tip of Africa. Three years ago, he completed the route in less than six hours.

The 2006 Two Oceans 56K will be held this weekend and Mr. Sergeant feels a twinge of regret that he will not be there to extend his run to six years on the trot. But he has enjoyed his early experiences of Bermuda?s busy road running scene and hopes to participate in as many races as possible.

He has also been a member of the Rotary Club in the past, something he would like to repeat in Bermuda.