At this year's SAFMA Annual Conference, Gerhard Oosthuizen, Senior Portfolio Manager at Total Facilities Management Company (TFMC), who won the prestigious FM of the Year Award in 2014, shared his insights and rich depth of experience acquired during his 14-year tenure at the company.
Oosthuizen, who has been in the facilities and property management industry for 30 years, joined TFMC in 2001, and has been responsible for client's strategic property portfolio, which houses priority 1 communications networks and data centre equipment.
Telkom Data Centre
According to Oosthuizen, many of these buildings are not only mission-critical from a network point of view, but are high-density office accommodation. "Of the many successful projects undertaken at TFMC, two that stand out for me are the R300 million Telkom new data centre (Uptime Institute Tier IV certification), and the R60 million submarine cable station at Yzerfontein on the Cape west coast.
"The new data centre was like our client always quoted, doing heart surgery without an anaesthetic," said Oosthuizen. "We had to ensure the total uptime of all services, such as data, electrical and air conditioning during the massive construction phase, as well as accommodate 300 - 400 office staff on a daily basis. Because the facility is situated in a residential area, it was critical to communicate with the community to get their co-operation and support, as well as all the staff members situated in the building."
Oosthuizen said as a non-technical facilities manager, key to a project of this kind is to have the support of a highly qualified and competent project and technical team, who he trusts implicitly.
Yzerfontein West African Cable System
Oosthuizen also received recognition as FM of the Year for the Yzerfontein West African Cable System (WACS) Facility. Although a smaller project in monetary value, this was a high profile project with International interest.
According to Oosthuizen, this four fibre pair 16 500 km cable system linking SA to Portugal, is not only the largest cable system in sub-Saharan Africa, but it was exciting to be part of a project that brought high speed internet into South Africa.
This project called on all of Oosthuizen's collective experience, from negotiations with all role players, environmental and legislative challenges, servitude agreements from the Yzerfontein beach landing position to the landing station some 4.5km away, land use issues, and EIA approval process.
Oosthuizen said once again this involved ongoing interaction and negotiations with various land owners and communities in the area. "These types of complex projects are about team work and I was privileged to be supported by an incredibly competent project team at TFMC, as well the external consultants appointed to assist with all the land use management processes and environmental management issues, to name a few."
Oosthuizen said that he was also proud to have represented TFMC at the SAFMA National Conference, not only as a speaker, but also at the expo showcasing a range of focused solutions that support the company's end-to-end total integrated facilities management services - from mobile generators, turnkey utilities management and its newly launched mobile maintenance service.
For more information, visit www.bidvestfacilitiesmanagement.co.za
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