Their experiences

Elzanne Werth

Civil Engineer (Water Infrastructure), Woodmead, South Africa

I started my engineering career with Hatch in December 2010 as a vacation student having just completed my first year of studies in Civil Engineering at the University of Johannesburg. I worked for Hatch during all 4 years of my studies giving me exposure to various projects (from research into rehabilitation of concrete structures to working on the Transnet Expansion Programme- Ngqura Container Terminal) as a young engineering student.

After I finished my studies I joined Hatch Goba full time in February 2014. I currently form part of the Project Delivery Group, specifically the Civil Infrastructure group. I have had the good fortune to be involved in various projects where my responsibilities have varied from drafting, designing, costing and compiling BoQ’s.

I have done floodline modeling for an industrial development in Rosherville, as well as hydraulic modeling for a new bridge to be constructed during the Bus Rapid Transport project in Johannesburg. I have been involved in various aspects of stormwater design on smaller projects. Currently I am working on the Mafube Coal Mine Life Extension project where I am designing the water transfer dams.

I have found the Hatch environment to be very conducive to learning and taking charge of your own growth as an engineer. I was afforded the opportunity to go on a Hydraulic and Hydrological Analysis course to further hone my skills in water infrastructure. The senior engineers take care to spend valuable time transferring knowledge and experience to us juniors, which provide the solid foundation for our own careers.

Nonkululeko Ntuli

Johannesburg, South Africa

My career with Hatch began in 2009 when I was doing vacation work as a bursary student, studying towards BSc. in Mechanical Engineering, at the University of Cape Town. I graduated in 2013 and began working at the beginning of February 2014. While doing vacation work I was exposed to the different facets of mechanical engineering industries such as mining, bulk materials handling and piping engineering. I gravitated more towards piping as I was highly fascinated by the material science and process aspects of piping engineering. At the end of the vacation work program I was recruited by the Piping Project Delivery Group to be a junior piping engineer.

Recently I’ve had the opportunity of working on 2 different projects, the Zulti South project and The New Oil Design Plant. On both the projects I was tasked with the development of piping and instrumentation diagrams and piping material specifications on iPas MP and ensured the successful modeling of components from the specifications in the modeling environment. I was also tasked with calculating pipe wall thicknesses and reinforcement calculations for the different pipe lines. I continue to expand my knowledge and progress my career by attending various training courses provided by the Learning and Development Centre at Hatch Goba.

What I value most about Hatch Goba is the variety in projects and the opportunities present for me to learn and increase my knowledge by working with the various engineering disciplines. One is challenged and groomed from day one to grow and accumulate as much knowledge as possible and to deliver work of a high standard.

Wing Cham Yu

Mechanical Engineer, PDG, Woodmead, South Africa

My career with Hatch began as a bursary student in 2010 while I was completing my Mechanical Engineering degree at University of Cape Town. This opened up vacation work opportunity as well as my starting job as an engineer.

I joined Hatch as a Graduate Engineer in 2013. During the start of my career I was very confused and lost. This is because the work in university differed greatly compared to the real world working environment. Hatch provided great assistance by providing a mentor, as well as having a Professional Development Programme (PDP) which structures how one can develop to become registered with ECSA and become professionally competent.

Hatch Goba also provided many work opportunities and travelling opportunities. I assisted with 2 separate contract negotiations in Zimbabwe and spent a month living in Zimbabwe, which was a really eye opening experience.

Currently, I am working on a large project for Tenke Fugurume Mining, and the scale of the project and the number of decisions made daily are so fast paced, challenging, and interesting. It shows a broader view on how the discipline feeds information and work together. I find this really interesting compared to a other fields of Mechanical Engineering career path.

Jac Botha

Mechanical Engineer (Bulk Materials Handling), Johannesburg, South Africa

I joined Hatch (Goba) as a mechanical bursar student in 2007 and started off my engineering career in February 2011 after completing my Mech B.Eng degree at the North West University. As vacation work over December/January is a requirement as a bursar student (as well as for the university), this was a great opportunity to get exposure to the actual working environment and industry as well as meeting brilliant technical specialists.

Hatch (Goba) has a structured professional development programme (PDP) in place to assist the young professionals to obtain their professional registration with the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA). This is where I chose a mentor to help guide my career and to ensure that I am getting the right experience for my ECSA registration. Fortunately he could also assist me on a personal and technical level as he is the Bulk Materials Handling (BMH) Lead for the Woodmead office, the Global BMH Coordinator as well as a Hatch Associate and shareholder and always makes time available for me when needed.

I have been very fortunate with great opportunities as I started working on an execution project for the first year and a half. The expansion project was for a processing plant in the DRC while we utilised some of our colleagues in Canada and Australia by work sharing to assist with the immense workload on our project. This is possible as all the Hatch systems are the same globally and gives you access to technical specialists in other regions around the world! This was a perfect start for my career and I certainly learned a lot during this project.

After the expansion project I assisted with two other processing plant projects, one for a plant in the Ukraine and a new local plant. I have also spent 16 weeks in Tanzania to assist a gold mine with maintenance optimization, worked on a project for a port in Mozambique, a port in Sierra Leone and a rail loading project where I was involved with the bulk material handling systems.

So far I have really enjoyed working for a global company where they give you the freedom to steer your own career while there are many opportunities to pursue, locally and globally.

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