WILLEM VAN DER MERWE
After finishing his studies in Mechanical Engineering at the Pretoria Technikon in 1986, Willem worked for a number of companies in Mechanical Engineering disciplines. His first taste of project scheduling already started in the 1990’s when he was a standards writer at the South African Bureau of Standards, where fixed schedules governed their output of SABS and South African compulsory automotive standards.
This continued when he joined the South African Antarctic logistics team in the late 90’s, planning Antarctic summer expeditions in detail to ensure necessary work finished in time, and to avoid equipment and material shortages in Antarctica.
By the start of 2000 he joined a mine in South Africa, and since then he has been involved in planning and managing numerous projects, first as an employee of the mine, and since 2006 in his own Project Planning business.
In late 2014, he and Owen Bosman were requested by a client to compile a course to train the client’s project planners, out of which the book “Practical Project Scheduling” was born.
“Understand how it all works and you can effectively manage your projects.“
OWEN BOSMAN
Owen successfully completed his Civil Engineering studies in 1989 at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. He landed a job with a Civil Engineering company first part-time while studying and full-time post graduating until he left the company in 1998 to start his own ventures.
Owen worked in many positions and areas within the company but it was when he ended up in the company’s head office that he first became involved in Project Planning. One of his first tasks was to re-calculate a network diagram for a large contract, and after spending many hours calculating, making changes and re-calculating he realized that there must be an easier and more effective way. Due to his fascination for computers Owen immediately started searching for software and found Primavera P1 and has been using Primavera predominantly ever since.
After leaving the Civil Engineering industry in 1998 Owen was involved in various ventures and businesses which amongst others include the retail sector, manufacturing (paint), systems development, and the project management of new multimillion-rand properties, and continued to utilize his project management knowledge in various ventures while continuing to do project planning on a free-lance basis.