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F E A T U R E
A Network For Infrastructure
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A Network For Infrastructure Aveng Group, South Africa's leading infrastructure development company, celebrated its 125th anniversary last year. With sub-sectors across the globe, we spoke to IT manager Heinrich Kukkuk to find out how the IT department keeps all branches of the company working together.
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s with any successful firm, strong communication is essential. But as a global player with subsidiaries ranging from mining and manufacturing to construction, Aveng Group's impressive level of diversity means that achieving this is an especially difficult task. While each division has its own unique requirements, there are group-wide standards and consistencies that must also be maintained. Unsurprisingly, IT plays an important role in keeping both separate divisions and the company as a whole moving in the right direction.
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“We've got two main areas. One being the manufacturing and processing side to our business, including steel processing for example — and the other being the more project-focused area related to construction and infrastructure development. So building roads, bridges, dams and stadia,” explains Kukkuk. The FNB soccer stadium, constructed specifically for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, was completed by Aveng subsidiary Grinaker-LTA in 2009. Naturally, projects such as this have entirely different requirements to those of the steel
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processing business, for example.
federated IT support model.”
“Contract-related disciplines demand project management and estimation related solutions whereas manufacturing operations require sales, distribution, logistics and inventory related competencies and our mining environment relies heavily on plant maintenance solutions,” says Kukkuk.
Aveng works primarily with propriety software, having found that custom-built applications typically have a higher total cost of ownership. With many propriety solutions being a very close fit to business requirements, the group has found little reason to use custom software when the solutions are readily available and locally supported.
Heexplains that Aveng uses central support, administration and management systems for the solutions that are common across the group. “For example, there's a human capital management (HCM) solution based on SAP, because the business processes are mostly consistent and therefore lend themselves well to a centralised solution, regardless of whether or not the industry is mining or manufacturing,” says Kukkuk. “Then there are the core serviceslike unified communications and messaging, collaboration environments, and security and authentication control.There's also the Group IT Strategy including governance, compliance and risk management functions are also performed as part of the 3
“We've replaced all of our group intranets with Microsoft SharePoint, and we also use it for a lot of document management solutions and workflow applications,” says Kukkuk. “In line with that, we use Microsoft Lync for a lot of instant messaging, content sharing, and other online collaboration solutions.” Aveng's relationship with its service providers is incredibly important, and has in part led them to move towards outsourcing commoditized IT services. “We tend to meet with our key service providers on a monthly basis. That's why we've found it important to try and rationalize the number of our service providers as much as possible — so we're able to spend more
quality time with each, rather than trying to spend ten minutes every quarter with a myriad of them,” explains Kukkuk. “We'd like to outsource the management of our Wide Area Network and portions of our Local Area Network, as well as our desktop support, and a couple of other areas where it doesn't make sense to retain specialised skills when we could bring them in when we require them,” he continues. “So it's a balance of outsourcing and third-party technical support, and we're trying to focus more on the business value adding solutions. For example, on the BI side, we try to employ people who can work closely with the business. And those are typically the people you don't want to outsource.” South Africa's on-going power shortages have also contributed to Aveng Group's desire to outsource more of their services. “From an IT perspective, specifically on the power supply side of things, the blackouts and load shedding have led us to think differently about backups and disaster recovery. Really, that's one of the main reasons we've decided to outsource our data centres to a third party. They have to do it for many other customers, so they're 5
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We've got two main areas. One being the manufacturing and processing side to our business, including steel processing for example — and the other being the more project-focused area related to construction and infrastructure development. So building roads, bridges, dams and stadia
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The second half of 2015 is looking positive for Aveng Group, too. “It's going to be a relatively tough place for the remainder of our financial year, which is up until June,” admits Kukkuk. “Many loss-making projects are coming to an end, and hopefully we've learnt a lot from them. We've also positioned ourselves in such a way that we will be in a better position to make the most of the inevitable release of public infrastructure spend within South Africa.”
more geared up in terms of redundant power and connectivity along with the added benefit related to competitive pricing as a result of economies of scale.”
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Kukkuk tells us how some sites are unable to run off backup power for extended periods, and as a result lose connectivity back to head office. This in turn causes activities to be delayed until power is next available. “It's just an inconvenience in some cases, but in other cases could basically bringbusiness to a standstill,” he says.“Although rather uncertain, things appear to be looking up on the power supply side of things with the last month or two being a lot more stable.”
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Contact Details Contact our office in South Africa Physical Address Aveng Park 1 Jurgens Street Jet Park Boksburg South Africa Tel:+27 11 779 2800 Visit: www.aveng.co.za/contact-us/company-contact-details For find more of our offices
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