The Civil Engineering Contractor October 2018 | Page 34

PROFILE
Feet in the ground
By Eamonn Ryan
A professional civil engineer,
MD of Franki Africa, Errol
Braithwaite, has exposure
in both the consulting and
contracting environments.
He has worked on projects
in Europe, North America,
the Middle East, Asia, and
Africa. These projects have
included large infrastructure
projects as well as
buildings, tunnels, marine
structures, and dams.
A
fter fulfilling the role of
technical executive in
the concession company
contracted to design, build, operate,
maintain, and partially finance the
Gautrain Rapid Rail Link in South
Africa, Braithwaite joined Franki
Africa in April 2015 where he is now
the managing director.
“I’ve been fortunate to work for
and with several wonderful mentors
and role models over the years:
Gavin Byrne, my first boss at Franki
nearly 20 years ago, was one of those
rare people who combines technical
excellence with high integrity and
profound people skills. Jerome
Govender, my boss at the Bombela
Concession Company (Gautrain),
was a man of serious intellect, vision,
integrity, a good sense of humour,
and always calm under pressure.
Roy McLintock, my predecessor at
Franki, espoused the highest levels
of integrity, genuine care for his
people, and an insightful management
mantra: ‘Empowerment with
accountability’. What a privilege
to have learnt from each of these
people,” says Braithwaite.
His appreciation of having been
mentored by some top construction
leaders has inspired Braithwaite
to in turn mentor others. In fact,
mentoring aspiring leaders is the
single most important role he
has, he says. “My personal vision
is to grow the leadership of this
wonderful company — to create a
leadership culture; to build a dream
team consisting of diverse leaders
with diverse skills who, when added
together, multiply each other’s skills,
who compensate for each other’s
weaknesses, and who do great things
together,” he adds.
One of the key requirements of
a leader is being able to evaluate
the character of others. There are
three key criteria when choosing
people to work for or with, or to
employ, Brathwaite says: character,
competence, and charisma. “By
far the most important of these is
character. Once or twice I have
failed to discern poor character — it
always leads to pain. To me integrity,
professionalism, and positive intent
are everything.”
He describes one of the highlights
of his career as his involvement
in the Gautrain project. “It is an
engineer’s dream to have been
involved in the Gautrain project
from the negotiation phase
through construction, testing, and
commissioning and into operations.
It was simultaneously intense,
challenging, fun, exhilarating, and
tremendously satisfying.
“Becoming the MD of Franki
Africa and being entrusted to lead
such an excellent organisation is, of
course, an achievement of which I am
enormously proud, and one which
Managing director of Franki Africa, Errol Braithwaite,
has exposure in both the consulting and contracting
environments.
32 - CEC October 2018