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Malose Phillip Chaba |
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Mlose Chaba, the newly appointed MD of Murray & Roberts
Engineering Solutions, is clever, connected and he thrives on new
challenges. With roots deep in rural South
Africa, Malose’s earliest career opportunity came when his first employer,
AECI, realised his potential and converted a technikon scholarship to a
university bursary after one semester. “I was very grateful to AECI for
the opportunity,” says Malose. “But I also felt angry that mine was the
first engineering bursary offered by the company to a black person.”
He was even angrier when a glossy magazine that published his story chose to censor the latter part of the statement for fear of offending his employer. Now, at 44, it seems that the fire of youth has been channelled into a fiercely entrepreneurial spirit. After completing an Electrical Engineering degree in 1985, Malose worked at AECI, Anglo Alpha and Eskom. In 1994, recognising the opportunities that were opening up for black business in a democratic South Africa, he decided to start his own electrical engineering company. From a single office in Gauteng, Karabo (Sotho for ‘solution’) Engineering grew into one of the big five consulting electrical engineering firms in South Africa, before merging with Stewart Scott International, a leading multi-disciplinary consulting engineer in the SADC region.Malose developed a relationship with Murray & Roberts over a number of years, working in partnership on projects such as Saldanha Steel (where he had sought a role for black business), the Bloemfontein Maximum Security Prison and other public private partnership opportunities. “My move from big business to my own company enabled me to gain wide-ranging experience in business,” says Malose. “As an entrepreneur, I learned that business may be opportunistic but you should never fool yourself into believing that you can build a business based on one opportunity.” He concedes that he has joined the group at a challenging time for Murray & Roberts, with major project delays, growing international competition in its domestic market and a persistently strong rand impacting the business. “I am not afraid of uncertainty,” he says. “My experience has taught me the value of using new ways of thinking – and long planning time frames – to sustain a business and keep it competitive.” Just eight weeks into his new position, Malose has already developed some strong views on the way forward. “I am questioning the assumption that our future lies in understanding developing markets. Does that mean we can compete in India, for example? I doubt it. I believe that our strength is in our engineering capability. “Our strong generic skills and proven world class capability are not limited to the big industrial projects. They can also be applied with equal success to other markets. “One of my challenges will be to strengthen the engineering human resource asset at Murray & Roberts. With all of the restructuring and dismantling of engineering activities in our sector, we have lost skills and need to recruit and develop new talent.” Malose is a senior member of a number of industry organisations and has also served on a range of government committees, including the Department of Minerals and Energy Steering Committee to promote Black Economic Empowerment in the Electricity Sector; and NEPAD Working Groups. A deep thinker, Malose enjoys reading philosophy and is
currently catching up on some South African fiction. He adds that long
distance running, which earned him a Comrades medal last year, is good for
his physical, mental and spiritual SHORT CV 1985 1990 Senior Instrument and Systems engineer at AECI 1991 1992 1995 2000 2002 2004 |
