Golder Associates announced the appointment of Dr Ralph Heath as its new Managing Director and Regional Vice-President for Africa. This followed an extensive recruitment process.Dr Heath assumed the role on 2 April 2012.Former Managing Director and Vice-President, Dr Fred Sutherland, has been appointed to global Vice-President: Corporate Development, following 12 years of successful leadership in Africa. Welcoming the appointments, Dr André van Niekerk, a Director of Golder’s global board, said that Fred had brought strong leadership to the employee-owned company which led to significant growth in Africa.

“He aggressively pursued the integration of Golder in Africa with the rest of Golder globally”. Fred has played a major role in Golder’s expansion in Africa, which now includes thriving operations in Botswana, Ghana and Mozambique, with offices opening soon in Tanzania and Guinea. Despite tripling in size under Fred’s leadership from 85 people in 2002, to more than 330 employees in 2012, Golder has maintained its culture of delivering excellence to clients. The Africa region has been a role model for Golder globally, achieving consistent performance, not only financially, but also in employee satisfaction, health, safety and environmental performance and in technical and client service excellence.“Under Fred’s direction, the Golder Trust for Orphans was established and consistently developed throughout Africa”.

“I am confident that Ralph will continue strengthening Golder’s record of technical and client service distinction and enable us to continue to attract quality people”, said Dr van Niekerk.Ralph said that he was pleased to be assuming new responsibilities in which he could provide his experience to the next generation of leaders. He has a clear vision for Golder’s role in Africa, as part of a global consultancy. “Golder in Africa has come about with successful mergers and acquisitions, hard work and visionary leaders and we will continue on this path in the future which is vital for growth”, said Ralph. “Technical excellence, intellectual freedom and new experiences are the language of growth with which I will lead the business and maintain our values”.Ralph said that Golder anticipates another solid year in 2012 on the back of continued expansion in resources, engineering and infrastructure projects across the region.

Background information on Dr Ralph Heath
Prior to becoming a consultant, Ralph worked at the CSIR and Rand Water. Ralph joined Golder in 2006 through the acquisition by Golder of Pulles Howard & De Lange Inc. where he operated as the Managing Director. He has assisted in the support of Zitholele Consulting, Golder’s Black Economic Empowerment alliance company, and filled the role of Operations Manager for approximately 18 months. Ralph specialises in water resource management of catchments, mine water management, as well as environmental flow requirements. Under his leadership the Environmental Technology Business Unit has grown to be a leading specialist group in mine water management in Africa.Ralph was appointed as an Associate of Golder in 2009.He received his Doctorate in Aquatic Ecotoxicology in 1999 from the Rand Afrikaans University and has led a number of technical associations, including being a Past President of the Water Institute of South Africa (WISA) and Chairman of the Diffuse Water Pollution Group of the International Water Association (IWA). He has an impressive research record with the Water Research Commission (WRC) and Coaltech with over 50 publications to his name.

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