Edgar Bradley
Johannesburg, South Africa
Edgar A. Bradley is a Consultant, specializing in Benchmarking, Human Capital Evaluation and RAM work (Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability). His qualifications include a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa (1964) and a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Akron, Ohio, USA (1969) aswell as an MBA from Cranfield University, in the UK (1975). He has the South African Government Certificate of Competency (Factories, Mechanical) and has completed the course in Advanced System Reliability Engineering by JBS Associates, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. He also has completed the course in Repairable Systems Reliability and Failure Analysis by the Finn Jensen Reliability Consultancy, Denmark.
For the past ten years he has worked as a Mechanical Consulting Engineer, giving consulting and training to the petroleum and other industries in the Middle East and in Southern Africa. He was formerly employed by Eskom, the South African power utility, in the position of Chief Consultant (RAM) in the Generation Group. His 31 years with Eskom included 18 years’ experience as a Reliability and Maintenance specialist as well as, before that, 11 years as a Project Engineer and two as a Boiler Plant Specialist. He has also worked for mechanical contracting firms as a project and design engineer, and has 50 years of industrial experience in Benchmarking, RAM engineering, power plant, pipework engineering, cryogenics and plant maintenance.
In 1999 he received Eskom’s Chairman’s Award for his work in developing the Operators’ Challenge, a simulator-based competition to improve power station operators’ performance and reliability. In 2002 he developed the concept further with the Cyberthon, an international version of the challenge, held between power station operators in South Africa and Russia. For the several years he served on one of Eskom’s tender boards.
For over 40 years he has also served as a lecturer in the Faculty of Industrial Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand, lecturing and developing courses on the MSc programme on inter alia, Reliability Engineering, Maintenance Engineering, Project Management, Industrial Marketing and Systems Engineering. He has also lectured in Reliability Engineering at the University of Pretoria. In 2013 he was appointed as lecturer in Quality at the Namibian University of Science and Technology. He has lectured in Reliability Engineering and Systems Engineering at North West University as well.
He has consulted to many firms in the electronics, defence, petrochemical, electricity, mining, manufacturing and chemical industries. He has also presented many industrial training programmes, both in-house and open to industry. He is a Registered Professional Engineer and a Member of the South African Institute of Industrial Engineers. He was also twice President of the Southern African Maintenance Association (SAMA – now SAAMA). In 1999 he had the major input into the design of the SAMA Audit and Award process, which was successfully applied in 1999 for the first time in South African industry. In 2001 he was accepted as a member of Mensa South Africa and in 2004 as a member of the Society of Maintenance and Reliability Professionals, USA.
He has had papers presented on reliability, maintenance and related subjects at conferences in South Africa, the USA, Australia, China, Hong Kong, Israel, Korea, Zimbabwe, the UK and Egypt. He has published papers in journals in South Africa and the UK. In both 2003 and 2004 he was invited to speak on the Eminent Speaker Tour of various chapters of the Maintenance Engineering Society of Australia. He is a regular trainer on various courses in various countries in the Middle East. He was a conscripted member of the South African Defence Force for ten years, retiring with the rank of Major from the Technical Services Corps. In 2016 he authored the book Reliability Engineering – A Life Cycle Approach, published by CRC/Taylor and Francis in the USA.
Edgar has been married to Peggy since 1968. They have four children: Guy, Vanessa, Susan and Samantha, and five grandchildren, Josh, Zara, Cassy, James and Jensen. Edgar’s non-work-related interests include church work, classic motorcycle restoration, birding, conservation and travel, especially by 4x4. He can be contacted at edgar.bradley@telkomsa.net
Profile created 7 June 2020
