Taking a Flyer On A Dream Frederik Mulder has a dream. It's been with him since he was a little boy. Now, many youngsters want to be pilots; some want to fly fighter jets, others aspire only to helicopters, and some daredevils fantasize about being acrobats, tumbling crazily amongst the clouds. Frederick simply wants to fly the big jets and be an airline pilot. Jesse Owens, the great Olympic athlete, knew a lot about making dreams come true. "We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort," he said. Frederik is making his dream come true; he has already started the arduous course to qualify as a Microlight pilot. The word "love" peppers the conversation when Frederik talks about what he does. He loves computers, so he added a part-time B.Sc. in Information Technology to his Civil Engineering degree. He is, naturally, in charge of software and hardware on his team at Africon in Pretoria. He loves designing as well. As the South African currency has strengthened, so Africon has refocused on the domestic market. Local golf courses and industrial developments have been added to the prestigious international hotel projects such as Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai and the Nova Vida project in Angola. "We are currently busy with an Ernie Els signature development off the N14 near Fourways - the Gardener Ross Golf and Country Estate," says Frederik. "We are also busy with a huge Distribution Centre for Woolworths. This massive building merges 7 current Distribution Centres into one. The building footprint alone is 900m x 120m; the platform around it is big enough to land a small aircraft on." The analogy is typical. Frederik and his team are responsible for the Municipal Services aspect of projects. "We are still in the process of moving completely to Civil Designer. What we have noticed is that we completed the work much faster than those still working on other packages." "I had just come back from a five month stint in Mozambique when we evaluated Civil Designer. We decided to standardise on Civil Designer when the Gardener Ross project began. I went on the one-week training course and picked up the design philosophy very quickly. The sewer network on the project has 710 manholes and about 31.5km of pipe. Civil Designer allowed us to cut the design and balancing time down to just 2 weeks," says Frederik. "With what we had previously, it would have been close to impossible to balance this thing." On the other packages the bottleneck occurred with the CAD operator. Tying down a CAD operator to clean up 10 sheets of long sections, change the line types and put it on a drawing was counter-productive. "Now with Civil Designer's sheetfiles, we set the scale, and in literally a minute you generate all the sheets and everything was in the right spot. That really made a difference."   The training is rated as very good. The inquiry about the level of support makes Frederik almost lyrical. "Let me tell you," he says forcefully, "support is so important. In the beginning we sometimes phoned three times a day just to sort out little things we didn't know. The Knowledge Base Support Manager, Brett Pureveen has incredible patience and made sure our queries got resolved in no time. Moving to the new software created an unexpected problem. "We had to shed workload, so another team was tasked with the storm water component. We finished our part of the project two months ago using Civil Designer, while theirs were completed much later, using alternative software. We are looking forward to the next development when everyone will be using Civil Designer and we can all enjoy the benefits." The Maputo project provided valuable experience for Frederik. "It was a World Bank project called Sanitation for 7 Cities. I was contracted out to German company Lahmeyer. The project encompassed water, sanitation and drainage for the 7 cities in Mozambique. Working there is not much different to here, except for language. I worked closely with an older engineer from Brazil who, like most of us, was not fluent in languages other than our mother tongue. Communication was interesting, to say the least," he says with an easy laugh. Meeting the donors and investors made a strong impression. "Just meeting the Australians, Greeks, Portuguese, Swedes, and the guys from USAID and the UN, was an eye-opener. We think we have diverse cultures, but experiencing the many different cultures from around the world in a small country like Mozambique was great." "The Mozambique people were really lovely. They are desperately poor, but they don't act like poor people. They have great dignity, they are proud of what they have," he says humbly. It's hard to resist the obvious question of whether the sky really is the limit for Frederik. But where does he see himself in the future? Civil Engineering? Information technology and computers? Or will he follow his dream and pilot jets for the world's airlines? "At the moment I have the best of both worlds; civil engineering and computers. I have only started my flying training, so who knows what the future holds," he says with a gleam of anticipation in his eye. Anatole France, a French Writer in the late 1800's once said, "To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe." Frederik Mulder will know what to do with his dreams. Frederik Mulder studied Civil Engineering at RAU from 1993 to 1997. To satisfy his love of computers, he completed a B.Sc. in Information Technology in 2004.   Block I, The Terraces, Steenberg Office Park, 1 Silverwood Close, Tokai 7945. Tel: +27 +21 701-1850 Fax: +27 +21 701-1822 Web: www.knowbase.co.za Email: info@knowbase.co.za