The SABS President's Award is presented to one of the SABS-accredited clients that shows significant improvement in business growth, business improvement, customer satisfaction and improved productivity, annually. It is the highest accolade from the SABS and is adjudicated by a panel of experts.
Floris Mostert, head of the ESS Division, which is responsible for civil projects and maintenance, corrosion protection, electrical projects and transformer refurbishment for the City Of Cape Town's electricity directorate said: "This year, 33 companies entered, of which 32 were private enterprises and only one a public sector division, namely ESS. From the 33 companies, only three were nominated for the finals. We were selected by the panel of experts as the ultimate winner of the President's Award.
"I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for allowing me to live out my dream of making our division a world-class operation. The team effort provided by both the ESS and Pragma staff has made this operation a vastly improved, more effective division, ensuring service delivery to all our clients. This would not have been possible without the Pragma ACC intervention," Mostert said. "It was indicated to me at the function that no other governmental or public sector department has ever been the recipient before."
Pragma Africa was contracted in 2007 to establish an Asset Care Centre (ACC) for the City of Cape Town's ESS division.
Ronnie Taljaard of Pragma Africa said: "Our initial activity involved the assessment of the department's asset management maturity. From this assessment an Asset Management Improvement Programme (AMIP) was developed and the day-to-day facilitation and delivery of the AMIP was driven through the Asset Care Centre, which was established on the ESS premises and staffed by Pragma. Our duties were varied and included, for example: the redeployment of ESS resources from internal work to contract management and supervision; the continued focus on work planning and control, method study and an integrated management system; the focus on long-term value add; and strategic direction of ESS, and so forth."
Not only did the ESS team walk away with the SABS President's Award, but has also won the SA Productivity National Award and various Pragma awards, including the Pragma CEO Award, the award for best run Asset Care Centre in South Africa, as well as the Public Sector Engineering Award.
"We've been benchmarked against stringent international standards and have met each challenge successfully. We've done exceptionally well and achieved an enormous amount over the past three years, which is something we can all be proud of," Taljaard concluded.
