EOH has successfully partnered with large municipalities and numerous government entities in South Africa for many years, enabling the public sector to offer its private sector and citizen customers services that allow them to be more efficient and productive. EOH’s technology solutions available to the City of eThekwini are designed to put powerful data relating to services and infrastructure in the hands of the City’s decision-makers. “When the relevant data is provided, the City gains important insights into how its services and assets are performing,” says Marius de la Rey, group executive of iOCO Services, a proudly EOH company. “This data will allow the City to understand where it is losing water, where it is gaining and losing revenue, how to efficiently manage and maintain assets like plants, and how to devise an effective roads and highways repair plan.”

De la Rey gives the example of sensors placed on the road to monitor factors like the volume and weight of traffic. “This solution will help the City to determine exactly which roads need to be repaired when and allow it to develop an effective road maintenance plan.”

The Group’s technology solutions work together to help make the City world-class. Online portals provide citizens with an easy way of reporting service interruptions or infrastructure problems like missing road signs or manhole covers, providing the City with important, real-time data on its services and operations on the ground.

Advanced technologies powering catalytic projects

EOH offers the City of eThekwini advanced technologies to power its catalytic projects. As one of the largest ICT groups in Africa, the Group benefits from its working relationship with leading original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) around the world and has a wide range of expertise and proprietary products.

“Our partnerships with OEMs give us access to the latest technological developments around the world,” says De la Rey. “Because we have in-depth expertise within our Group, we augment these solutions with our own best-inclass intellectual property.”

The Group’s advanced technology offering includes a digital twin capable of virtually replicating the entire infrastructure estate of the City or a selection of power, road and other infrastructure. The digital twin is powered by data and artificial intelligence programs and allows the municipality to monitor its estate, perform predictive maintenance on its infrastructure and optimise the performance of its assets.

One of EOH’s own technology solutions, the IMQS platform, provides a detailed picture of infrastructure such as cables or pipes that runs underground. The platform indicates to property developers what they will find below the surface of the ground and updates the digital geospatial map with their property development plans. It enables better management and maintenance of City assets by providing the exact geolocation of leaking pipes or other below-surface infrastructure that need to be repaired.

“This EOH solution is a prime example of how we place data in the hands of the right people, from the technician on-site to the person dispatching the repairs team for the City,” says De la Rey. “It goes a long way to making the City smarter, since it sends the team directly to the correct site.”

EThekwini also stands to benefit from EOH’s Scan RF mesh network technology, which will prepare the way for reliably connecting all the port’s devices and systems and making it a seamless, secure and almost entirely automated operation. This would be part of a digital transformation roadmap that the Group offers the City to improve the efficiency of the port and restore its world-class status.

A trusted public sector partner

EOH is a long-standing partner of the public sector, having provided major ICT solutions and services to public sector entities in KwaZulu- Natal, across South Africa and beyond the country’s borders over the past 25 years. Its excellent track record of delivery for the sector includes: security solutions for the City of Cape Town; information technology and payment upgrade solutions in KwaZulu-Natal; water conservation and demand management projects in KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape and Gauteng (through its JOAT business); and roads management and specialist engineering support in Namibia. “The Group has developed a full-service municipal offering in the last 20 years, spanning mechanical, electrical, civils, water and environmental technology infrastructure solutions,” says De la Rey. “We provide all the technology infrastructure required for the City of eThekwini’s planned upgrade and development projects, which will bring prosperity to the province and the rest of the country.”

The EOH Group’s technology solutions are bespoke and modernised. Where the City may have outdated IT systems that need to be replaced, EOH can help it to achieve efficiencies by modernising the older systems. “Because the Group is embracing the global trend of offering technology solutions as a service and on a consumption basis, it will replace old systems with more efficient and cost-effective solutions like the cloud, where you only pay for what you use.

“EOH has a dedicated public sector team that understands what a municipality wants and is increasingly providing cities with ICT services based on consumption models. The Group has extensive experience of working with the public and private sectors in KwaZulu-Natal and is therefore wellpositioned to realise the efficiencies that can be achieved in eThekwini Municipality.”

EOH’s successful partnership with large municipalities is based on its ability to provide tailored, innovative and regulatorily compliant technology solutions and services to forward-thinking cities.

Its offering includes all the technology solutions required for a thriving smart city, including data analytics solutions, scalable infrastructure asset management solutions, connected healthcare and education solutions, electronic security solutions, turnkey power and power management solutions, and renewable energy solutions. In addition to technology infrastructure, EOH offers bespoke application development, data solutions, cybersecurity solutions, and other core ICT products and services.

“EOH is a socially responsible citizen that supplies solutions that are in line with the Fourth Industrial Revolution market trends. We believe that strategic partnerships between the public and private sectors in the area of technology support job creation and lead to citizens becoming part of the global workforce ,” says De la Rey.