18
Mechanical Technology — June 2013
⎪
Power, energy and energy management
⎪
F
ounded as a design house
(Tekniva) in 1999, Carab
Tekniva has evolved into a
multi-faceted engineering so-
lution and plant service provider. The
group now offers a full range of engi-
neering services, which include plant
care and physical asset management.
Its experience covers theoretical and
practical design aspects of power gen-
eration, process plants, industrial boiler
and steam installations, refineries, sugar
boilers and utility plants.
“We started out as three individual
companies,” says Pansegrouw, the
company’s technical, marketing and
sales representative. “Our CEO, Dirk
van Aarde, founded Tekniva as a me-
chanical engineering consultancy spe-
cialising in pressure equipment. He did
consultancy work for Eskom, Actom
and various other boiler operators and
manufacturers.”
Another of the current directors,
Riaan Bester, “is an asset management
and reliability engineer with a back-
ground in the petrochemical industry.”
He founded an asset management
consultancy called Amrex.
“Carab Technologies, the third com-
pany, was started by a boiler engineer
called Fanie Scheepers, who saw the
need for a database to manage all of
the changes and maintenance activities
for boiler repairs, refurbishments and
modifications on large utility plant.”
This led to the development of a
computer program, Carab Plant Care,
which has been successfully used in
Eskom for more than a decade and is
still a cornerstone of Carab Tekniva’s
offering today.
Van Aarde officially founded the Car-
ab Tekniva Group in May 2012, when
he combined the three companies under
one banner. “So we are now a plant
consultancy, specialising in pressure
equipment and plant asset manage-
ment. Mechanical engineering remains
at the core of our skills, supported by
a range of in-house developed software
tools. We have both aftermarket and
boiler plant design capabilities, and are
MechTech
talks to Carab Tekniva’s Billa Pansegrouw about Plant Care, a South African-
developed database and software solution for best-practice management of routine
maintenance at power and other large process plants.
SA-developed plant maintenance
management tools
Plant Care is Carab Tekniva’s software solution for boiler maintenance and planned shut-down management.
Carab Tekniva’s U-Fi interface is an innovative wireless communication solution devel-
oped to enable a seamless transition from a physical plant inspection into an electronic
format and for easy transfer into the Plant Care database.
active across South Africa on some of
the most modern projects.”
Core to its service offering are asset
management and plant care solutions,
which are mostly offered in the heavy
plant environment to power stations;
petrochemical plant; sugar; and pulp
and paper facilities. “And, what all of
these have in common, is the need for
pressure equipment and steam.”
The company also engages in green-
field projects and upgrades, though.
“We are currently involved in several
boiler conversions from coal to gas, and
on the energy efficiency side, we do a
lot of waste energy recovery projects
and regeneration projects, such as the
