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Durban City Council
Alex started as an apprentice electrician in January 1972 at the Durban City Council and qualified in May 1975 . In January 1977 he left the services of the Durban City Council for a better position at the Kempton Park City Council.
Kempton Park City Council
At the Kempton Park City Council, Alex started as a Test Electrician in the Test department doing transformer repair , H.V. switch-gear repair , metering , switch-gear panel wiring , traffic lights installation / repairs and battery charger repairs. It is at this point that he realised that he would have to further his education, he started to study part time. Having proved to his superiors that he was serious about studying further, he was sent to study full time and he attained his N6 certificate. In June 1981 he was appointed as apprentice instructor and his apprentices achieved excellent pass rate. In July 1984 he was appointed as Engineer's Technician and was in-charge of three Test Technicians . Duties performed were Cable Fault Pre-Locating & Locating , Air-Conditioning plants & small units maintenance , commissioning of substations , testing of transformers , calibration and installation of bulk metering , administration of Technicians work allocation and work quality. In July 1988 Alex was appointed to the post of Test Superintendent in charge of three Engineers Technicians . Duties performed were research of forthcoming projects , issuing of reports to management , responding to letters from consumers , attending departmental meetings , analysing surveys & issuing reports , updating drawings with the use of Autocad , setting up annual budget for the Test department , purchasing of equipment , control of expenditure & standard of work and attending council meetings & functions with elected Municipal
Councillors. In December 1988 Alex left the services of the Kempton Park City Council for a better position at KPL ETSA a subsidiary of BICC (UK).
KPL ETSA
At KPL ETSA, Alex was employed as a
Workshop manager / Commissioning Engineer with the responsibility of the manufacturing and repair workshops. Duties performed were commissioning of HV substations , estimating , issuing reports to clients , investigating clients complaints , checking on quality of service and manufacturing. This position was held till January 1990 shortly before the company was placed under provisional liquidation. The reason for his leaving was that it had become impossible to perform his duties as suppliers would only accept cash which was difficult to extract from the accounts department.
Kempton Park City Council
Before terminating his employment at KPL ETSA in January 1990, Alex had secured a position of
Engineer's Technician (Control Officer) at the Test department of the Kempton Park City Council with the promise of a more senior position when available. However, by December 1994 a more senior position had not presented itself and Alex
started "Steel & Touche" with a partner.
Steel
& Touche:(1994 to 2001)Alex
and Dick Steel started a metering consulting company in December 1994 (a consulting firm for utility savings).
New Projects:
- Paper analysis analysing
clients accounts for both tenants and the Municipal accounts to the landlord
for iregularities.
Installing test equipment and analysing data in order to achieve savings as quickly as possible, ie. Power Factor Correction, Harmonics Filtration equipment.
At the same time a
quick assessment of the building is done to spot obvious problems. An in-depth initial report is submitted to the client highlighting cost and achievable savings requesting his written approval.
From the
analysis of the data from the test equipment, we instruct our Power Factor Correction contractor what size unit should be installed.
Once the in-depth paper analysis has been completed, the problems highlighted by the paper analysis is
investigated and check meters are installed by our electrical contractors. A few days later the accountability is checked and the areas with an accountability less than 97% are checked thoroughly.
Drawings of the buildings reticulation done on Autocad 14.
Meter reading sheets with built in accountability checks are
designed and tested.
Administration of
labelling of all distribution boards, water and electricity meters by our Electrician which forms part of our tidying up.
Purchasing of materials and equipment.
Administration and cost tracking of our time/materials and of all contractors involved in the project.
An in-depth
final report and invoicing is submitted to the client. Depending on the size and duration of the project, monthly
progress reports are issued to the client .
Existing Projects:
Monthly
analysis of Building's metering profile data.
Monthly onsite check on the performance of the equipment.
Checking of meter reading sheets and Municipal accounts and issuing of savings letters and invoicing.
Strike
Technologies
January 2001 to January 2002
Having had sales
experience and years of commissioning and protection experience, he settled
in quickly into the post. Sales increased by 100% in 10 months. His initial sales area was
Rustenburg in the North West Province, Welkom and the Bloemfontein area, having
succesfully re-established contact with the clients he has given the area to his
junior to maintain. Lesotho and the Rustenburg area was a big success, within a
month sales exceeded all expectations, both these area were also given to his
junior to maintain. The Pietersburg to Palaborwa area was slowly being developed
and the Nelspruit to Swaziland area were well developed. Botswana area was about
ready to be given to his junior and Zambia and Namibia were starting to have some reasonable
orders. Zimbabwe and Angola were at the beginning stages.
MetSurge
Consulting
January 2002 to Date...
The 13 months spent at Strike
Technologies were not wasted, contacts built up over the period quickly paid
off. Protection being his passion, metering has taken a minor role, however, he
is starting to regain some of his clients from Steel & Touche.
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