Personality Profile Sponsored by :
GERT VAN ROOYEN :
ACHIEVEMENT IS ABOUT TEAMWORK
By Benjamin Brits
A born and bred Johannesburg resident , this young engineer spends his days doing what he loves – providing solutions .
Attending a local high school , having never moved away from his city of birth , van Rooyen also completed his mechanical engineering degree at the University of Johannesburg . Admittedly , he remembers first year engineering thermodynamics being a particularly challenging subject . However , he now says that once you understand the basic principles everything becomes clear and all the problems can be solved .
Starting out his career directly after graduation , he was offered employment at HC Heat Exchangers , where he celebrated his 10 th year with the business in February this year . The opportunity made sense to him in the fact that although the sector may grow or shrink , the need for food to be kept cold and many buildings to be conditioned is something that is never going to go away .
“ Getting into the HVACR sector , I started to enjoy it more and more , and I echo the sentiment of colleagues that the industry has a seemingly endless range of interesting projects to work on . We have opportunities , and more importantly the responsibility , to make systems better and more efficient , as well as investigating and investing in new technologies ,” he says . “ Being part of the HC group of companies gives me the opportunity to constantly work to these ideals .”
Clearly a fun-loving and proud father too , van Rooyen enjoys spending time with the “ coolest kid the world has ever seen ”, exploring , adventuring , and jumping off whatever he can to be a part of his child ’ s journey . [ At the time of publishing van Rooyen was expecting his second child ].
Although there are a few things that stand out for van Rooyen personally , when it comes to personal achievement , he believes that any success is always reached through a team and not an individual . Even though each team member works on individual parts , those parts alone can ’ t make the project .
“ Working together is what gets you to the end-goal . People have different skillsets and for me identifying meaningful career achievements is more about learning to grow and overcome challenges while gaining experience and creating solutions for your clients , together ,” he adds .
© RACA Journal | Benjamin Brits
Gert van Rooyen , a mindful engineer who knows success is a team effort .
Looking into the crystal ball of the future , van Rooyen knows that every ambitious person , like himself , wants to grow in their knowledge and experience to one day be in charge of a business or division . Van Rooyen adds that he believes in the importance of growing in responsibility in any business but that it shouldn ’ t be at the expense of losing touch with where you started . When the balance becomes uneven you may either lose the passion you had or become ineffective at taking on new challenges and enjoying the opportunities of growth .
For this reason , he feels for his future that he wants to always remain involved in offering solutions in design . Due to the trajectory of the HC group of companies and the various companies being established to offer value to more segments of the industry , he wants to focus his growth to the full scale project design team . He believes that the unique offerings and opportunities presented by the various companies enable the team to successfully partner with all role players in the market , so all successes are shared . “ As it has been said we need to focus on where me meet and not where we compete ,” he says .
“ The ultimate result for me is growing and learning , improving what and how I do things and identifying the improvements of the future ,” he concludes . RACA
www . hvacronline . co . za RACA Journal I April 2021 23