Power Outages have been haunting Pretoria Eat Residence for the last couple of years leaving residence without power for days

Residence and the Councillors are literally kept in the dark as to the ACTUAL reasons for the outages

In most of the outages there are a strong indication of poor maintenance on the part of the Tshwane Electricity Department, but the real causes are never identified or communicated

Issues such as the high demand and the rebuild of the Wapadrand substations are quoted – but this don’t sufficiently explain why a problem occurs.

The reality is that these issues are becoming more frequent occurrences in other parts of the City as well – indicating a larger problem at hand

Power systems are designed and built with fault tolerance and no overload should ever damage the system – only when maintenance has been neglected can this occur

At the moment the Council and all Residence are sold the “silver bullet” of the Wapadrand Substation rebuilt – that will solve all problems

This is unfortunately not true since several problems have occur in other areas indicating that the power issues will persist even after the rebuilt

If the new systems are not maintained and supported by predictive and preventative maintenance practices these new installation will very soon be in the same state and the same problems will ocure.

The Residence of Pretoria East therefore demand the following action from the Major of Tshwane

The DA lead Coalition and the Major promised service delivery will be restored within Tshwane and now is their time to step up to the promise

1. That an independent Electrical Consulting firm be appointed as technical oversight to the Majors Office
     – This Consulting Company should report directly into the Majors office and NOT into the COO or Electricity Department

- This should take the form of a Mayoral oversight committee and potentially also add Water & Sanitation later in a similar arrangement

2. The Electrical Consulting company should be appointed purely on merit - therefore capability and track record to deliver the below
– Any other criteria like BEE, Preferential Procurement and other bad procurement practices should be dropped

- In consulting engagements, like this, price / cost should also be subjected to capabilities – the lowest prices / bids are normally not the ones that you should consider

3. The Electrical Consulting Company to perform the following Due Diligence and take up the role of Independent Management Oversight of the Tshwane Electricity Department
a. Review the Predictive and Preventative maintenance strategies and provide a GAP report compared to what is good international practice
– this should include aspects like routine Infrared monitoring of all Substation Components, Housekeeping etc.

b. Review the implementation and compliance to Preventive maintenance tasks – review completeness, schedule and frequency of inspections that have / were performed and produce a GAP analysis report.
c. Perform a Competency and skills based audit on technical and management staff – produce a GAP analysis report against acceptable international norms for similar institutions
d. Due Diligence Audit on all Substation and Equipment under Tshwane’s control – Produce a GAP analysis report against acceptable international norms for similar institutions
4. Electrical Consulting Company to Conduct a proper analysis of every major incident and produce a Root Cause Analysis (RCA)  Report signed by a Professional Electrical Engineer – this should be conducted before the Tshwane Electricity Department enter the site to preserve all evidence
The Executive Summary of RCA should be made available to Residence – in plain English – and define clearly the reason, corrective actions and if any disciplinary action need to be taken
5. Electrical Consulting Company to be present and provide a Quality Assurance and Information Communications role at each major incident – informing the Councillors onsite of the actual situation, validate the work that need to be performed and the timeframe for restoration
In many cases the Councillors are fed incorrect information and believe it since they are not technical – this will provide the councillor’s onsite with accurate and reliable information to communicate to residence
6. Electrical Consulting Company to perform a Quality Assurance function on all repairs
7. Enter into a Competency and 2nd Line Support agreement with the Consulting Company or other suitable Electrical Contractor – outsourced 2nd line of support