Amsterdam?

Dear All,

Work has been going well.  Both Keith and I are busy with our work placement reports for the CCIP (Paris Chamber of Commerce) and feedback reports for our host companies.  This task  is keeping us quite busy.  Following the completion of these reports, Keith then needs to finalize his recommendations and a report of SPIECAPAG’S current risk  protocol.  I am busy with an INVOCOM proposal for SPIECAPAG which outlines the benefits of a communication process we successfully implemented  on the Green Point Stadium.

This past weekend Keith decided to further explore Paris, he will elaborate in more detail.  I decided to join one of the groups to Amsterdam.   We left early Saturday morning, at around 8am and arrived in Amsterdam at 12:30pm.  One of our colleagues has been there 4 times already and we were fortunate to have a well educated tour leader in our midst – free of charge for a change!  We spent most of the afternoon walking around Amsterdam - what a beautiful city!  The waterways that connect the whole city are phenomenal and seriously impressive engineering for its time.

On Saturday evening we explored the night life of Amsterdam, and yes, we did walk past the well renowned “Walletjies Straat”.  What they say is all true!  We were staying about 45 min out of town, so we called it an early night and were in bed by 12am.  The next morning we were up early and did some more site seeing and then headed back to Paris at about 5pm. 

All in all a great weekend.

See photos below.

GROUP FIVE / SPIECAPAG

Hi Guys,

We are currently spending time with Spiecapag on our "business developmental initiatives" from a business partnership perspective. Spiecapag is Group Five's JV partner on the Transet NMPP project (DBN-JHB) pipeline worth about R3bn.

To give you an idea, Spiecapag is part of the ENTREPOSE Contracting group of companies in France,  providing an extensive range of services covering project finance, design, engineering, procurement, construction, project management, training, commissioning & maintenance of oil, gas & energy pipeline projects globally. They operate through many subsidiaries across the globe with an annual turnover of about 300 million euro.

Current projects on their order book include;
1.  US$ 660million BTC & SCP for projects in Georgia & Azerbaijan for a BP led consortium,
2. US$ 500million Sonatrach project in Algeria,
3. US$ 250million Sea Gas project in Australia,
4. US$ 420million Chad - Cameroon project for ExxonMobil led consortium,
5. 500million Euro onshore pipeline project in Papua New Guinea,
6. 241million Euro LNG onshore pipeline project in Angola.
7. 110million Euro MelGaz pipeline facilities project also in Algeria, etc.

Spiecapag has been in operation for over 80 years and are operational in over 60 countries covering 5 continents, to give you an idea of the size of the organisation. Albertyn & I have been working on various elements within the organisation and will share this with you in due course.

See pics of our orientation to this organisation, as well as a very good colleague of ours, Mr Laurent Lefevre - a short frenchman with a good sense of humour. We are busy teaching him Afrikaans & now he has learnt to swear the other frenchman in the company with them not knowing what the heck he is saying.... classic!

Speaking about Afrikaans... myself & Albertyn were a bit grupmy & frustrated the other day with the daily commute of approx 90mins each way (work & back) so we strated our conversation on the tube in Afrikaans, giving vent to our feelings. Little do we know, there is this tannie in one corner of the tube that walks up to us & starts talking to us like old friends do, it turns out she's been in Paris for 17 years - married & working here but she is formerly from CT and misses home plenty. Anyhow we continue talking code language about the arrogance of the french, etc. & at the next station, a voice from the front says, "julle manne moenie so hard afrikaans praat nie" - on se' hel, maar wie kan dit nou wees, it turn out this is a couple from Centurion on honeymoon, also battling with the french language - basically if you don;t know it, you're gonna battle getting around.

Code language Afrikaans..... what an experience, I mean what are the chances that we hook up with people that share our frame of reference, when people don't even speak english here.

Eish...

  

Keith in London

Hi guys,

This past weekend 8-10 October, I went  to visit a very dear friend of mine in London. Kamal is "straight outta Benoni" & has been living in London for the past 4yrs already. He has married a beautiful lady, Hasita from Lenz (wedding earlier this year) and boy... have they made a life for themselves here in London - you gotta see pics of the view of the main business centre (Canary Wharf) from their apartment balcony in Greenwich North (approx 4 tube stops to Westminister Abbey station)... very central. The apartment overlooks the River Thames leading into the harbour.

On Saturday morning, Kamal took me around to all the places of interest in London, i.e. the Big Ben & London Eye in Westminister Abbey, Waterloo, Covent Garden Square, Picadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square, etc, etc. Quite a lot to see over a short weekend so I will definitely be returning at least for 2 weeks next time. Lots of pics to see of my visit to some of the main tourist attractions. As you will see in the pics, it was yet another grey London day.

The best for me was going to the "Rand Savers" store in Covent Garden Market, everything from boerie rolls & biltong to Zamalek. Nothing like a taste of home when you're away for so long. Also, we visted Waxy o'Connors Pub - what a mysterious pub. The other highlight was seeing a big statue of tata Madiba right across the Big Ben in Westminister Abbey... if you say you're from SA, some people may know where it is because of the SWC world cup we recently hosted, but just say you're from the land of Nelson Mandela & then everybody knows where it is that you really come from - viva "Proudly South African".

On Saturday night, Kamal's cuzzie Paresh invited us for the "Ealing - Three Bridges Cricket Club" awards evening dinner & dance party. This cricket club is affiliated to Middlesex Cricket Board and they play league cricket all over the UK.
En-route we met up with Nilesh, another cuzzie from Laudium (PTA) in London for about 6-7yrs already. I was real happy to hook up with some cuzzies I hadn't seen in a long time (Laudium, Lenz & Actionville in London... I leave the rest to the imagination) - they went out of their way to show me a good time... that was, a few bottles single malt whiskies later. So, long story short, we had a great time - they have such a great circle of friends who made me feel very welcome and the fan base for team support is unbelievable - if one ever talks about team spirit, I sincerely felt it there that night. It was also quite interesting to have had a chat with Uncle Arnie (Anand) who went into exile to London from SA in 1982, his views of SA from the outside, after our democratic transition was very interesting.

Asta-la vista people... until next time! (just a tip... the boys are going to Amsterdam this weekend).

Cannes and Monaco visited the past weekend.

Dear All,

This past weekend Keith and I headed in different directions.  Keith decided to visit an old school friend in London and Pavan and I headed for the South of France (Cannes, where the yearly film festival is held and Monte Carlo/Monaco).  Keith will elaborate in more detail about his journey.

Pavan and I boarded the TGV train at 7:45am Saturday morning.  The train travels at 320km/hr - an experience that can’t be described in words.  The luxury, comfort , reliability and efficiency of this service is simply out of this world.  It took us about 5 hrs to Cannes.  On our arrival we popped into our Motel (2 Star, in SA it would have struggled to secure a 1 star rating!).  Its’ saving grace was that it was well situated - about 50m from the station and 300m form the beach. We then headed for a stroll along the beach front, did some window shopping and grabbed something to eat and drink (of course).  Pavan then asked the waiter how far Monaco is from Cannes and he replied that it was only 45min by train.  We both looked at each other and jumped up and headed for the station.  On our arrival in Monaco we headed for the harbour area where all the action happens.  The scenery, architecture, boats, cars, and overall ‘jol’ is just mind blowing.  These people are just in another league all together. 

We then ended up at a local restaurant that turns into a night club at 12pm.  A live band was playing and the vibe was just fantastic.  We caught the last train out of Monaco at 9:40pm, and headed back to Cannes.  On our arrival back at Cannes at about 11pm, we grabbed something to eat and walked around checking out all the clubs.  Despite only getting into bed at at 1am, we were up at 8am the next morning  for a refreshing swim in the ocean - such good and responsible “manne”!!   The locals thought we were completely mad.  After a quick breakfast, we packed up and checked in for our ride back home.

All and all one of the highlights of my tour so far.  Please see pics below.   

Activities of the past weekend and our first few days at work.

Dear All,

This past weekend, Keith  and I explored Paris from different angles.  On Friday night,  Keith went out with some of the fellow delegate members and Laurant (One of the host company’s project managers).  I decided to give it a skip and climbed into bed early.  On Saturday morning Keith decided to head for Paris CBD to do some shopping  while I went with some of the other guys to a shopping centre (La Vellee)  in the South of Paris, about 1hr30min by train (about 15min by train from Euro Disney) .  We found some real bargains here, especially clothes (good quality at a min of 50% less than in Paris).

 On my arrival back at the Hotel, after visiting a bicycle shop on the west of France, we decide to proceed with a night cap.  Some of our colleagues made contact with us at 11:30pm that night and managed to convince us to join them in Paris CBD for a “jol”.  We arrived and had a few toots with them at an Irish pub.   Unbelievably, the bar lady asked us if we were from Africa de  Sud!   She could hear our accents and told us that she has been in Paris for the past 3 months and is  originally from Johannesburg.  We eventually decided to head home at 2:30am.    Upon our arrival at the train station,  we were informed that the last train stopped at 1:30am.  Due to the flood of people that were in Paris  for  the annual White night evening (a  cultural evening in Paris, held annually), we could not get a taxi.  We had no choice, but to wait for the next train that would only arrive at 6:30am.  We arrived at the Hotel at about 7am and went straight to bed. 

Keith and I then departed for the Paris motor show  (as mentioned by Keith earlier)  –    what an experience!   Keith likes them  red and fast one,  but I'm still a fan of the trust old Hilux!  

On Monday morning,  our 1^st day of work at our new host company , Spiecapag, a company specializing in on shore pipelines, we arrived punctually at 9:15am.  It took us about 1hr30min by train from the hotel to get to work.  We were welcomed by Monsieur Michel-Bernard Owana (Chief planner).  He proceeded to introduce us to all the relevant managers in the office.  This office is responsible for all bidding, finance control, procurement, design, HSE and quality control/co-ordination of all the projects across the globe.  Keith is working closely with Monsieur Nichola on the risk side of their business.  He has been tasked to evaluate their current risk systems/protocol and the new proposed system suggested by Vinci.  I am working with the chief planner and have been exposed to their latest project, a 500 million Euro (4,5 Billion SA rands) on shore pipeline project in Pappa New Guinnea.  Total construction period = 35 months. They tender team worked for 9 months on this bid.  The client is Mobil and there are no JV partners.  The office is also busy with some final negotiations on a pipeline in Australia (value = 900 Million Aussie dollars).   This bid is with a local Australian company (Lucas), on a 50/50 basis. If successful,  Speicapag will be the leading contractor.   

The first few days has been really interesting and I am confident that we will bring back some tangible experience that can positively affect our business units back at home.

This weekend Keith is off to Londen and myself and Pavan will be heading for Cannes on the South of France.