In our expert spotlight series, we shine a light on our talented experts who share their personal journeys and tell us about their current roles at Veolia Water Technologies. Here we highlight Derek Geber, the Engineering Manager at Biothane who leads the engineering team with his passion and dedication.
Can you tell us about your career and what brought you to Biothane?
In 2011, I started working at Veolia Water Technologies South Africa as a Process Engineer (the South African term for a Chemical Engineer). There, I worked in a variety of roles, including design, projects, commissioning, and tender engineering, but always with a project focus. I have experience with a variety of physio/chemical treatment processes as well as biological treatment processes. From 2013 to the end of 2017, I was involved with anaerobic technologies from Biothane at the local level, where I helped execute two Memthane projects. This experience paved the way for me to join Biothane in 2017, when I was hired as a Project Manager to work on the largest Memthane project to date. Since then, I have worked on nearly every technology in the Biothane portfolio, and I am currently the Engineering Manager.
What is a typical day for you in your role?
A typical day can be a cocktail of the following:
- Translating the engineering needs of project managers to the engineering team.
- Managing engineering priorities within the team and making sure that the workload of individuals is manageable.
- Helping team members to understand and solve problems.
- Managing the quality of engineering work.
- Ensuring that execution structures (templates, standards, workflows) are in place, followed, maintained, and created as needed to ensure efficient and effective execution of engineering activities
What are some of the biggest challenges in your job?
My most difficult challenge is managing an ever-increasing workload with a small team, and constantly coming up with smarter solutions (better tools, workflows) to consistently increase our efficiency and quality of work.
What is the most interesting project you've worked on?
Memthane - Woodlands Dairy
This was my first project involving Biothane, but only on the execution side. We combined anaerobic digestion with reverse osmosis to produce water for reuse in a dairy, while the biogas was used to generate steam for the same factory. For me, it was incredible to see how a waste product could be transformed into a valuable commodity. Furthermore, it was through this project that I met some of my current colleagues.
What do you anticipate the water industry's future to look like?
My hope (rather than prediction) is that people will increasingly consider sustainability to be one of the driving factors in the water industry. This would imply a shift away from energy-intensive and physicochemical treatment processes and toward more environmentally friendly biological processes.
Water reuse and recycling as part of a circular water economy will become more important as weather patterns (and thus stable water supply) become less predictable.
Fun fact about you?
I can play the guitar behind my back 🙂
Connect with Derek
