When Leo Timmerman received his long-service award at a special presentation held in his honour at Knights in late-October this year in recognition of his 40 years’ service at High Voltage Equipment (HVE), it marked the culmination of an impressive career during which he contributed much towards the division’s success in recent decades.
Casbah Zwane, HVE’s Divisional CEO, in presenting the award to Leo, said: “He played a key role in the development of isolators over the years, not only on the design side, but in all other aspects, including tendering, type testing, overseeing spare parts components manufacture, site work, sales and training.
“He was the senior member of the design team that developed our current CRD range of 22kV to 132kV isolators and was largely responsible for ensuring that they complied to Eskom’s specifications.”
When Leo joined the division – then Hudaco Isolators – in 1982, with Doug Thompson as his boss, he was put in charge of assembly. Promoted to Workshop Superintendent in 1984, when ownership of the company changed hands to become Cullinan Power Equipment, he first got involved in testing of the company’s isolators. In the mid-80’s his responsibilities were extended to include quality control and type-testing as new isolators were developed to cater to Eskom’s requirements.
Then in 1990 Leo began doing site-work and, shortly before GEC-Alsthom acquired the company – which it renamed High Voltage Equipment – in 1994, he was appointed as Sales Engineer and got involved in costing and tendering for isolators. By this stage HVE, in addition to producing isolators, was also manufacturing busbars and dog-boxes and supplying imported gas-insulated circuit-breakers to the local market.
From 1998 onwards he became more directly involved in designing isolators, under Doug Thompson’s guidance.
“A highlight for me was in 2004 to 2006 when we tendered to Eskom for the full range of isolators from 22kV all the way up to 765kV and were successful in winning the term contract for the entire range,” Leo said.
When Doug retired in 2013 Leo carried on designing isolators and was the leader of the design team that from 2014 onwards developed the now current fully locally manufactured CRD range of isolators from 22kV through to 132kV, successor to the DSB range.
At the end of 2017 HVE was required by Eskom to re-type test the whole array of isolators deployed by the utility, a process that normally takes 18 months to perform.
“To ensure that we were in with a good chance to win Eskom’s upcoming term contract for isolators again, we had to arrange to have the re-type testing done in a much shorter time than normal and we did them all in six months. This included having to design, manufacture and test a 66kV 2500A isolator prototype in accordance with a new Eskom spec, as well as providing new designs of earth switches for the 22kV and 33kV units. This ended successfully, with us winning the contract in 2019.”
Leo also led the team that designed the recently introduced vertical break isolator, as well as a 132kV centre break isolator for the African market that is due to be launched early next year.
Leo describes himself as “a bit of a maverick”.
“Sometimes you have to be one to get the job done,” he explains.
“For instance, with the re-type testing project we had to do in a hurry for Eskom at the end of 2017 and early in 2018 to ensure we won the isolators term contract again, it was unavoidable having to tread on some people’s toes, otherwise we wouldn’t have got the job done in time and would’ve lost the contract.”
Commenting on his approach to his work, Leo said: “The attitude of ‘it’s not my job’ doesn’t exist in my vocabulary. I’ve never been afraid of asking questions and learning. I’d like to especially thank Casbah for permitting me to work way past my ’expiry date’. Lastly, I’d like to thank my colleagues for their support and input.”
Born and educated in Holland, Leo, 72, emigrated in 1972 to South Africa, where he worked as a maintenance boilermaker in two or three companies in and around Johannesburg before joining Hudaco Isolators.
Leo, married to Benita with three daughters and seven grandchildren, retires at the end of this year.
