View Digital Corporate Profile of Read Swatman Voigt - Energy in African Business Review March 2010

Written by Jennifer Denby & Produced by Alex Barron (Original article featured on EnergyDigital.com)

 Established in 1991, Read, Swatman & Voigt (Pty) Ltd (RSV) has developed to become one of the foremost consulting engineering and project management companies servicing the global mining and industrial sectors. Taking on the role of ‘partner’ to most of the major mining houses in Southern Africa, it has been responsible for the design and delivery of a number of gold, platinum and base metals mines, process plants and refineries.

With a history that grew from the founding work of Hennie Read in his first company Read Engineering, the firm was officially set up when Mike Swatman and Rodney Voigt came on board. Today, two of the founding partners remain with the business. Together, they have built up a body of expertise in deep shaft mine design and shaft sinking, headgear design, mine equipping and mine infrastructure. And in recent times, their offerings have expanded across many sectors of the industry and now include pyrometallurgical and process plant capabilities.

Read, regarded as one of the leading engineers in this industry having made major contributions to many iconic mines and processing plants worldwide, tells us about the strengths that have led the firm to success: “The main aspects that have set us apart from the competition have been the capability of our core people, our experience and successes on projects, and our project based business model.”

RSV focuses on the project as its principal core, meaning that the interests of the project always come first. In fact, all the support services within the company are there to render service rather than to drive the business. “Also the collective capability of our Engineering & Technology Division, and the broad based offering across our linked enterprises, adds enormous value to clients” he adds.

RSV’s “linked enterprises” are new businesses in related market sectors. Through them, the group offers clients the benefit of combined proven experience across the full spectrum of mining, metallurgical, mineral processing, industrial plant and infrastructure design, installation and commissioning.

QUALITY AND SAFETY

In addition to the aspects pointed out by Read, RSV’s ISO registered Quality Management System (QMS) also forms an important backbone to the business, as does safety. “Both these areas of our business are fundamental to success and as such have full-time teams to maintain continuous improvement programmes,” he says.

“We recently launched the Gear UP initiative. This is an e-based safety system that will be audited for OSHAS:18001 certification in March this year and is an important part of who we are,” Read explains. The highly interactive tool provides RSV’s project teams with direct access to safety procedures, tools and templates and, most importantly, workflow that guides activity. “Our belief is that this is a world class system that sets us apart from many of our competitors,” he adds.

PEOPLE

Employment equity is a very important part of RSV’s business development, as demonstrated by the firm’s permanent staff complement. “Our business relies on knowledgeable workers and as such most of our people have the core skills necessary to engage and deliver projects,” says Read. “However, we have a culture of mentorship and coaching that ensures that individuals are exposed to continuous improvement initiatives whilst on projects. This ‘on the job’ training ensures that our people continue to deliver excellence at all times.”

Furthermore, RSV is actively involved in partnering with a number of key clients on corporate social investment projects. Here the company’s contribution involves the provision of technical skills, project leadership and a strong component of coaching emerging contractors. “This contribution is seen by our clients as very beneficial as it furthers their objectives in this important aspect of doing business in South Africa,” he adds.

DEVELOPMENT

Read continues: “Using our linked enterprise strategy as a rationale, we have created a presence in the U.S., Canada, Australia and Mozambique. We expect to pursue this strategy in 2010 and anticipate creating a presence in South America and possibly Asia.” Also, in the last two years, RSV has grown into the coal and base metals markets; a sector it has now outlined as an important growth point.

“Our core competency in the group is ‘access to the ore body’. This is a highly specialised capability and is very exportable. We anticipate leveraging this capability to access new global markets and perceive strategic joint ventures as the most likely way of achieving this. This approach is proving to be successful and we have a number of large international projects in the pipeline.”

With core values including integrity, competence, creativity and teamwork, it is clear that this ambitious group will continue to go far, despite having to endure a challenging economy. In fact, economic hardship has served as a catalyst for improvement.

“Business revenue reduced in 2009 and this has refocused the business on reducing wastage on the one hand and improving efficacy on the other,” says Read. For instance, RSV has reduced project teams to more effective units, and has improved its governance oversight, resulting in a 20 percent reduction in rework. “These initiatives mean that we are much improved on our current projects, and more importantly our readiness for growth in the market is better than ever,” he concludes.

FACTS AT A GLANCE

COMPANY NAME: Read Swatman Voigt

CEO: H.W. Read

OPERATIONS: Consulting engineering and project management

ESTABLISHED: 1991

EMPLOYEES: 1100

REVENUE: R1 billion