JANUARY 2016www.endeavourmagazine.com

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Aveng Grinaker LTASupporting The Future

You’d be forgiven for thinking that any company that diversifies to a great extent would lose their sharp focus and expertise, but once in a blue moon a company rises to dispel such notions. Grinaker LTA is one such organisation and we spoke with Dr. Lilian Simon to find out how they have managed what so few others have.

WRITTEN BY AMY TOCKNELL

SUPPORTING THE FUTURE

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AVENG GRINAKER LTAWWW.GRINAKER-LTA.COM

27 11 923 5000

AVENG GRINAKER LTA

Dr. Lilian Simon is quick to confirm just how wide the company interests stretch, “The mechanical and electrical business unit has an oil and gas division that constructs and maintains

(including shutdowns) process plants in the petrochemical and mining industries. The power division constructs and maintains power plants (coal, gas, and renewable energy). There is quite a big focus on getting work in Africa.”

Essentially, if you can think of it, Grinaker LTA is able to support it and put viable infrastructure in place to help you grow it. What an incredible position to be in!

Fantastically well positioned in every sector that it has diversified into, the company observes that its business units are self-perpetuating and able to standalone as experts in their respective fields. The civil engineering division, for example, has ongoing IPPs, major road works projects and municipal water and sanitation contracts, to name just a few. The mechanical and electrical sub-unit, similarly, is working hard and has carved itself a good reputation on the maintenance sector and is a steadfast player in the RSA power plant refurbishment programme and not to be overlooked, the buildings unit is soaring on the wings of countless large scale project opportunities.

With all of this in place, how exactly are the day-to-day activities of this one stop organisation supported? That in itself must be a mammoth task.

“We have permanent offices in Johannesburg, Secunda, Sasolburg, Vanderbijlpark, Durban, Cape Town and Rosh Pinah (Namibia) where we service our clients from. We also have pipe

AVENG GRINAKER LTA

Founded over 125 years ago, Grinaker LTA is a heady amalgamation of a number of companies but one thing has always remained the same; it is a multidisciplinary construction giant. Encompassing civil engineering, building, coastal building, mechanical, electrical and engineering divisions, it soon becomes apparent that this is no flash in the pan setup, rather, we are in the presence of a magnate with heritage.

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AVENG GRINAKER LTA

fabrication facilities in Vanderbijlpark (capacity 40,000 dia inches per month), Secunda (12,000 dia inches per month), Durban (15,000 dia inches per month) and Cape Town (5,000 dia inches per month). In addition, we have an electrical and instrumentation fabrication workshop in Vanderbijlpark that can fabricate electrical and instrumentation panels as well as our plant and equipment stores in Vanderbijlpark that services our various sites.”

There is now no doubt whatsoever that this is a self-contained empire, seeking out opportunities and making them work through a medley of business units and talented workers, but are the industries that Grinaker LTA has immersed itself in buoyant enough to keep them afloat?

“For the mechanical and electrical business unit, at the moment we see a downturn in the capital expenditure in the mining and oil and gas industries, mainly due to the drop in commodity prices and the oil price. This directly affects the reduction of capital project, which affects construction. Our clients are deferring a lot of their capital expenditure. We are trying, however, to expand our maintenance and shutdown offerings to our clients, which needs to continue. In the power sector there are quite a lot of new projects in the pipeline in South Africa and Africa, which we are pursuing.”

It truly does seem that when one door starts to close, others

automatically spring open, but a foot in those doors will only get you so far. Trading on a fantastic reputation is everything and means the difference between winning a contract and missing out, so what it is that makes Grinaker LTA different from other major competitors?

“… We can give a multidisciplinary solution to our clients and we can also offer turnkey solutions. We have a welding school in Vanderbijlpark where we train welders from the local community with our partner, Sasol and we have also built training centres at Medupi and Kusile. The labour that we train we use on our sites to help them get practical experience and we try and absorb them into the business once they have qualified. We also support various social community projects at our various construction projects.

We are constantly involved in various charity organisations, not just as a division, but as a company. This year on Nelson Mandela day, Grinaker LTA delivered blankets, furniture and food to various organisations across the country.”

There is little doubt that the up to 3,000 staff that are employed at any one time are well cared for and highly experienced, as a reputation such as Grinaker LTA’s is not something you risk on undervalued or inexperienced workers.

“Central to our business are the values of customer focus, being

AVENG GRINAKER LTA

adaptable and open to change, being performance and results driven, honesty, integrity and trust, teamwork, empowering our people and being safety minded. Training at project/site level is focused first on safety (including working at height, using the tolls etc). However, development of the core skills is key, hence the training of apprentices in partnership with clients like Sasol. The welding school is a key facility for this. Other training is based on core skills like project management, commercialisation, quality and tender estimation.”

Dr. Simon went on to note that,“Our staff are so important to us because people empowerment

determines our success.”With successful diversification in to a plethora of industries and

a full compliment of highly motivated and enthusiastic expert staff, Grinaker LTA appears to have it all, which accounts for how they manage to keep their clients so satisfied that they keep coming back. Regular feedback and performance reviews help to stay on track and clients are given easy access to senior management members, so as to feel valued, heard and most importantly, respected. With a desire to develop the labour being used in the coming years, Grinaker LTA isn’t shy about admitting that it is keen to move into yet more markets and that having the right construction skills in

place to do so is vital.With 2016 in full swing, the company is looking forward to the

next 12 months of internal improvements and Dr. Simon revealed what some of the most crucial elements are,

“Cost Reduction! We are striving to become a lean and mean machine to get rid of any useless overhead costs, while striving to claw back time wherever possible. We need to produce more for the same time allowed, with less resources, i.e. improve our productivity. But not at the detriment of our third focus, which is quality. We must reduce our rework and repair rates, first to reduce our cost and second to satisfy our more and more demanding customers. We want to look after our customers, so that their needs are increasingly better met.”

With a clear and definite plan in place, we have absolutely no doubt that Grinaker LTA will successfully economise where it can and continue to improve services as a result. There is nothing hidden with this company and it’s refreshing to see that there are still organisations that can admit they have some work to do to perfect their vision and in the case of this company, it is clear that the whole team will be working together to do it.

“The future sustainability of our business depends on the effort of every single employee, not only management decisions.”

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