CONVENTION 2022
Registration
Sponsors
Speakers
Registration
VENUE: HET VLOCK CASTEEL IN RIEBEEK KASTEEL, WESTERN CAPE
The theme of this year’s convention was Facilitating the New Normal: Are we SMART enough?
Sponsors
Gold Sponsors:
Conlog is renowned for design and innovation and holds more than 200 patents and trademarks. As a proudly South African business, Conlog has headquarters at the Dube Trade Port in Durban with a presence in over 50 countries in Africa, Middle East and South America. With a global footprint of a base over 12 million Smart meters and Prepaid Solutions, servicing over 90 Utilities and providing access to power for more than 50 million households. Conlog has a history of manufacturing metering solutions for over 50 years and is recognized as a premium and trusted brand in the prepayment metering markets. Conlog focuses on customer centricity to create value through innovation for the products, and platform lines of the business as well as focus on markets, revenue and offer to deliver growth.
TID ROLLOVER – LESS THAN 3 YEARS TO GO!
STS compliant prepayment meters installed globally will need to be reset before 24 November 2024. That is the fixed date that all existing STS meters are programmed to stop accepting new prepaid credit tokens created after this date, unless the municipalities and utilities upgrade their vending systems to the STS Edition 2 specification.
Each credit token has a unique token identifier (TID) encoded into the 20 digits to prevent token replay at the prepayment meter. The TID is referenced to a base date of 1993 and will run out of range in 2024 causing the prepayment meter to stop accepting new prepaid customer tokens.
All utilities are obliged to upgrade their vending systems to the STS Edition 2 specification. This transition involves resetting the memory of each prepayment meter before November 2024.
For more information, visit www.tidrollover.com or www.sts.org.za
Silver Sponsors:
WeBill, a South African technology company, was founded to address the burning service delivery problems relating to managing the distribution of utility assets in South Africa.
Our objective is to revolutionise the way customer-centric utilities are measured and managed, eliminate fraud, ensure billing accuracies and revenue collection. Using cutting-edge technologies, we have developed an Integrated Utility Management Eco-System, to achieve this objective.
For more information, contact Nicola vd Merwe on nicola@webill.net
Enerlytics offers Utilities a full stack TID Rollover Solution including a dedicated TID Service Desk via it's Call Lab offering. Chat with us about your unique requirements and how we can ensure that your revenue is protected post November 2024.
Item Sponsors:
Speakers
Andrea Johnson: Investigating Director at the NPA
Andrea is an admitted advocate and has been in the employ of the NPA for 25 years having commenced as a junior prosecutor at the magistrate’s court in Alberton on 1 June 1996.
She has throughout her career prosecuted in all the levels of court in the land on various types of matters including those relating to the corruption against former National Police Commissioner, the late Jackie Selebi, the femicide of Chanelle Henning a young mother whose death was orchestrated by her estranged husband Nico Henning and a former Nigerian Olympic athlete Ambrose Monye as well as the much-publicised murder of Reeva Steenkamp at the hands of her boyfriend, Oscar Pistorius.
She was the National head of Organised Crime from 1 February 2019 till 28 February 2022 and oversaw matters and strategies for the NPA relating to amongst others:
•Gangs
•Drugs
•Cash in Transit robberies
•Essential Infrastructure Damage
•Extortion in the Construction industry
•Cable theft/Cell-phone tower battery theft and damage
•The Unrest and Unrest related matters including those that will consider the instigators etc.
From 15 October 2021 till 28 February 2022, she also acted as the Special Director of the unit dealing with Terrorism matters in the NPA. On 1 March 2022 she was appointed by the President to head the Investigating Directorate which looks at all state capture matters. She is a passionate, robust and well-respected advocate. Her stakeholder management skills are beyond reproach and expectation and she is respected by law enforcement, her peers, judges, the legal fraternity, business and the everyday man/woman on the street. She is fluent in English, Afrikaans and Zulu and her proficiency in the languages makes her a great communicator. Her mantra is “I am truly, uniquely me and this me ensures that I am fit for whatever purpose circumstances require of me any day all the time.”
Jannie Fourie: Visual Revenue Management
Jannie is currently the Executive: Electrical Infrastructure
Visual Revenue Management (Pty) Ltd, where he oversees the management processes for meter audits and identify specific shortcomings where revenue is lost and identify programs where gains can be made to increase revenue in both short and medium terms. Part of the process is to set up an alternative revenue enhancement model to maximize revenue, as well as initiate and manage first line maintenance projects to enhance revenue.
Previous Position:
Director: Regional Operations
City of Tshwane / 2010 – February 2019
•Develop and roll out the strategic management in the Region.
•Do interventions to improve service delivery in the City where needed.
•Ensure adherence to all policies and procedures.
•Actively participate in change management.
o Form part of the Top Management in the Region as well as in the Department and the City.
o Represent the City of various service delivery and professional forums
o Develop Strategies to ensure the decrease in service delivery costs through better coordination, higher working standards and ethics.
o Strategically align the Region to the changing environments.
o Strategically align the budget and resources to the changing environments.
Desigan Govender: Product Manager
Desigan Govender, Product Manager, is responsible for the Conlog offer to market across all three lines of business: Product, Platform and Services. All industry engagement, by conducting presentations, participating in various expert forums and spreading awareness through media interviews and engagements. Desigan is also part Business development with focus on electricity distribution and water.
1. Areas of expertise (three to five areas)
a. Fit for purpose Utility metering solutions, specifically electricity and water
b. Metering technology and connectivity
c. Business development
d. Product management
2. Career path
Desigan’s early working career began in 2002 as an Instrumentation Engineer in agricultural research institutions and late as an Embedded Software Engineer in a military research facility in Pretoria. His specialization into smart metering began in 2005 when he joined an innovative energy management company - initially as a Product Development Engineer, shortly thereafter being promoted to R&D Manager, and as Program Manager. He served as Chief Technical Officer in water metering company focusing on emerging sectors of smart water metering and water demand management.
3. Academic qualifications
Desigan holds a BSc Engineering Degree, with honours
4. Industry memberships
Desigan is an Associate member of SARPA (Southern African Revenue Protection Association), Association of Power Utilities of Africa and associate member of the Association of Municipal Electricity Utilities.
Brian Hill: Sales and Technical Director for Utilities World
Mr Brian Norman Hill has 30 years of experience in the prepayment industry. He started at Conlog in 1991 and saw out 17 Years of service. Mr Hill started out at as a bench technician repairing Conlog’s first prepayment meters. He was also Involved with the implementation of STS in the industry primarily with Eskom and their vending rollout. Mr Hill left the company as the Services Director.
He then spent 3 years contracting to Manitoba Hydro International, being based for 1 year in Tanzania as the Commercial Manager on a natural gas commercialisation project and 2 years in Nigeria as General Manager on a turnkey prepayment project. He thereafter came back to SA and joined forces with fellow shareholder Poobalan Naidoo to start Utilities World.
Utilities World has been going strong for 11 years in which time Blu Label Telecoms has become a shareholder, cementing the company’s relationship with the country’s largest distributor of electricity and airtime. Mr Brian Hill currently serves as the Sales and Technical Director for Utilities World.
Ithriam Leukes: Ontec - Head of Water Services business
Ithriam has been in the utility industry for 20 years and started with Schumberger, Actaris, Itron and KEV Accurate Metering.
His initial involvement and introduction to water metering was testing and verification of mechanical water meter as per SANS 1529 and the then SANS 10378 (lab requirements).
Ithriam has held various designations with regards to water metering from a product point of view and more recently in Ontec expanded this Knowledge to include the systems and services component of water as utility resource. In Ontec he is responsible for heading up the Water Services business for both the public and private sectors.
What he has learnt over his 20+ years involvement in the utility industry is that continuous learning is one of the key aspects to remaining relevant.
Patrick O’Halloran: ARB Global - Technical Product Specialist
Experienced Electrical Engineer with over 25 years’ experience in technical, commercial and management sectors in the local and international electrical utility and manufacturing industries.
Determined, self-motivated, dedicated and a strategic thinker. Family man with good communication and motivational people skills. Good leader with abilities to train people and empower them with experience gained over many years.
Extensive experience with electrical networks and standard committees. Qualification Bachelor’s Degree in Heavy Current Electrical Engineering from the Witwatersrand Technikon. (1996). Presently employed by ARB Global as the Technical Product Specialist. Responsible for introducing new product for the ARB Holdings group of companies.