The 88 000 buildings owned by the South African Government, have been the topic of much discussion recently after the Minister for Public works, Dean MacPherson had lamented the state of the buildings and lack of timeous interventions in maintenance, that has led to billions being syphoned out of the fiscus, with little or nothing to show for it.
Additionally, money is often wasted in the leasing of new premises when the old ones are deemed to be unusable or are declared unsafe due to poor maintenance and lack of formulated upgrades.
It was for this reason that the department has now determined that no new buildings may be leased or bought and that the current buildings owned need to be repaired and rectified for use.
The underlying principle with all property is that if it is not maintained and suitable upgrades done – it loses value and usability.
Enter the Global Maintenance Specialists Pragma
The Pragma Group has offices in Johannesburg, Cape Town and the Netherlands, with partnership offices in Mexico, Malaysia, Namibia and Singapore.
According to Bani Kgosana, Chief Revenue Officer Pragma Global, they are a company with 500 staff “So we have a global reach and yet, you know in many ways we are still a medium-sized South African company. “We sleep dream and think maintenance” says Bani.
The company certainly has maintenance in its DNA. Established in 1990 by Industrial and Reliability engineers, with a vision to provide advisory engineering services to organisations that are in asset intensive industries that is still the core business service as their professional services business.
There are two other components to the business one of them is a Maintenance Academy, and the third is Pragma’s Managed service business, where companies outsource the management of maintenance contractors to the company.
Proprietary Digital Management Platform
The key to Pragma’s effective management of facilities and assets is its on-key platform. This is a digital platform that Pragma has developed internally. Effectively it’s an enterprise asset management system that some people refer to as a computerised maintenance management system. “It’s been built and designed by our people and continues to be developed by our team of application developers in Cape Town”, says Bani
The effectiveness of their management system is highlighted by the fact that several global organisations such as manufacturers are utilising the system and showing results. According to Kgosana, this spans various industries including Mining, Retail, Agricultural and by the facilities management community as well.
Kgosana articulates his belief that the combination of their advisory, Training and their managed services structure, utilising their dynamic enterprise management system can provide a fully-fledged solution for government assets.
Effective Maintenance Saves Money
The cost of maintenance is often exacerbated due to poor systems and poor procedures and this is what Bani believes is the ultimate issue with State properties.
“Maintenance can turn around a really difficult tragic situation as which was with load- shedding” “We have enough examples and evidence that shows that by replicating those pockets of excellence across other areas of government infrastructure, we can definitely turn around and solve the issues we are dealing with at the moment” says Bani.
The system allows for effective data accumulation where you could potentially start picking up that there are problems with particular contractors or parts and can start to effectively predict maintenance issues and faulty repairs.
Recurring Problems eliminated
The benefit of having digital platforms with rich data can begin helping to solve continuously recurring problems.
Other areas where the system helps save costs is in risk profiles, where insurance premium are lowered because of timeous interventions and maintenance and where claims are not repudiated due to non-working or fault equipment such as firefighting equipment, as was recently experienced in the parliamentary buildings in Cape Town when they burned down due to a faulty sprinkler system.
Even Things such as part or equipment warrantees, are often not checked and unnecessary expense is incurred on repairs or replacements of assets still under warrantee, and the Pragms system esures these are adhered to.
Wisdom from Germany
Bani concludes with a story of a German man he worked with who was always going on about the how much Germans Value maintenance. “One day in a conversation. I asked him Why? Why the insistence on maintenance, and he said something very interesting, he said because we’re not rich enough to buy things twice”.
This profound statement is perhaps the call that all in government in South Africa, should be placing on their doors to be read every day. It is certainly a tremendous piece of wisdom that could be the beginning of a new journey of ensuring that our state owned assets are properly cared for and maintained.
Prhaps with this type of philosophy at play, people like Bani and companies like Pragma, can start making pragmatic and purposeful advances in restoring our national assets and building a more efficient and prudent future by reducing wasteful expenditure.
