Return visit to South Africa for Process Controllers Exchange
From 5-16 June, Johan Oost went to South Africa for the return visit of the Exchange Programme for South African Process Controllers (PCs). In March the South African PCs went to The Netherlands for a two week programme with dedicated field trips and workshops to experience the Dutch best-practices.
Together with Leo Meijer, Johan guided and supported the four PCs from eThekini Water & Sanitation (EWS) and City of Cape Town (CoCT) in developing their action plans based on the assignments they got from their management. One of those assignments was to reduce the energy by operation, implementation of a personal assessment cycle, training of management in motivational leadership and internal collaboration. The PCs were requested to disseminate the experiences they got in The Netherlands within the organization and colleagues. After all the management and engineers were briefed by the PCs.
The programme was organized both in Cape Town as well as Durban. Johan Oost: “There are many levels of exchange in this project. The PCs went to The Netherlands, but they visited their colleagues from the other metro as well. This was quite unique. Actually the exchange on operations level from one plant to another in the same organization does not happen so much, while it is a powerful tool to learn and improve the operations. It was great to see the PCs directly starting to discuss and exchange ideas, but a good workshop structure and organization was inevitable to create an environment to do this.”
This last capacity development project under the Center of Expertise project was an international Exchange Programme for South African Process Controllers from eThekini Water & Sanitation (EWS) and City of Cape Town (CoCT). This project was executed by Vitens-Evides International, World Water Academy and World Waternet, funded by the Dutch Embassy (under the umbrella of Center of Expertise). The aims of this exchange project were:
- Showcasing some best-practices in The Netherlands and in South Africa
- Solutions for urgent challenges in South African organizations (formulated by management)
- Skills development to perform as Change Agent and in didactics
- Knowledge exchange between South African and Dutch professionals
- Knowledge exchange amongst South African professionals
- Implementation of results with workshops in own organization
