Pragma Holdings - Engineering consulting and services for asset-intensive industries

Year of Formation and Background to Founding: Pragma, an engineering services company focussed on enterprise asset management, opened its doors for business in June 1990. The founding members were present CEO Adriaan Scheeres and Academy MD Arnold Botha. In those years, the science of maintenance management was relatively new, and only a few select industries had proper asset management practices in place.

“There was simply no structure in place to optimise companies’ huge investments in physical assets. We saw an opportunity in the market to deliver the services and tools to support organisations’ equipment availability, reliability and performance objectives,” Scheeres says.
Pragma takes its name from the word “pragmatic”, which means accepting reality or understanding theory and then adapting it and applying it in the real world.

Company Mission, Product & Services:
Pragma’s vision is to deliver “Smart enterprise asset management solutions for the world | The Pragma Way”. Pragma is a dynamic, future-focused engineering services company that offers enterprise asset management solutions geared for Industry 4.0 and beyond. We take pride in the partnerships we build with clients by providing specialised asset management practices and supporting software tools. We help a diverse, asset-intensive client base to perform at their peak while balancing asset performance, cost and risk. Our clients operate in the mining, manufacturing, utilities, consumer retail, oil and gas and original equipment manufacturing sectors.
Our services include specialised consulting, corporate and public training, asset care and reliability engineering outsourced services, condition monitoring products and services, and our flagship suite of asset management software tools – On Key EAM®. Our range of services addresses our clients’ needs in maintenance management, reliability engineering and sustainable enterprise asset management.

Current Shareholders:
Pragma is an owner-managed company with an investment partner, Reatile Industrial, holding a 37.54% stake in the business. Our Employee Trust offers limited unit shares that South African employees own.
A Pragma Africa Employee Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) Trust was created with all South African employees listed as beneficiaries as an added benefit.

Number of People Employed:
470 permanent employees based in South Africa and the Netherlands.

Greatest Corporate Achievement:
Over our 30-year history, we have achieved several accolades and milestones, recognising our commitment to service excellence, dedication to innovation, and our effort to help shape the asset management landscape. These include a number of performance excellence awards from clients, recognition for our technical achievement from industry associations like Southern African Asset Management Association and South African Facilities Management Association, and acknowledgement from our peers for helping to shape the industry through contributions to standards like ISO 55000 and ISO 410140.

However, our single greatest achievement will be continuing to build on our ability to adapt quickly to a dynamic and changing industry that saw us make the transition from a small maintenance management consultancy to a multinational asset management service provider.

Hope for the Future:
We aim to continue growing from strength to strength in a rapidly evolving asset management industry, giving peace of mind to asset owners worldwide.