On 4 November 2011 Qantas Flight 32 left Singapore Airport on-route to Sydney. Only four minutes into the flight an oil stub pipe (7cm long) failed on the number 2 engine. The engine literally broke into pieces and the pilots recorded 54 system failures that had to be handled. The debris fell onto the Indonesian island of Batam. Two hours after taking off from Singapore Airport Flight 32 landed safely back at Singapore Airport with only 100 meters of runway left due to some failures in the braking system. An amazing story, isn’t it? However the most amazing part of this aircraft incident to me is the manner in which the CEO of Qantas Airways, Alan Joyce, came to hear of the incident. He was driving with his Investor Relationships Officer (IRO) when the IRO remarked that the Qantas share price is plummeting. Keep in mind that at this point in time Flight 32 was still in the air busy resolving all the system failures. After contacting the Operations Room of Qantas then only did they hear about the predicament of Flight 32. Isn’t business today just so dynamic!! Too survive in today’s business environment you need to be extremely flexible, dynamic, innovative and I believe you must be passionate about what you do. 

I always feel that we as a company function a bit differently than the average company out there. This was confirmed again during the past month when one of our clients wrote the following with regards to our service in general and one of our Project Managers, Montu Brits (translated from Afrikaans): “Given the exceptional quality of work that your staff have produced, I have recommended an increase of work to be channeled through your company for the next term of the contract…..” and “Lastly I would like to compliment the excellent work that you (Montu) have done…..you have without a doubt been the best Project Manager that I have worked with within my 13 years involvement at Local Government level”. What can I say; maybe just that it makes me extremely proud to be part of such a team.

We are very excited about being awarded a contract by the Limpopo Department of Agriculture (LDA) for the Mapping of Agricultural Commodity Production in Limpopo province. This project has just started and will conclude in May 2012. This project is very similar to the Gauteng Agricultural Census that was successfully completed in 2009 for the Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (GDARD). We believe that the baseline data created from these types of projects will form a critical part of the decision support systems for Provincial Departments. We believe that ultimately this type of projects will be done for all nine provinces in the country. 

I am looking forward to the second half of this year and just hope that we can get past this cold winter thus far. 

Blessings

Eugene du Preez