Oswald Professional Engineers

Oswald Professional Engineers is a consulting engineering company with a mission to lead by innovation, being energetic and loyal when providing quality engineering solutions that can be trusted and respected by clients.

Oswald Professional Engineers offers consulting, turnkey solutions and out of the box services. They specialise in Mechanical (Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning), Commercial and Industrial Refrigeration, Insulation, BIM Capabilities, Project Management and Coordination, and more.

Kenan Coetzee is the BIM Manager at Oswald Professional Engineers. He joined around a year ago to drive the business’ emphasis on BIM forward. Kenan keeps up to date with BIM information and the latest happenings around the world in order to keep his “finger on the pulse of new technology”. If Oswald requires new technology, he is responsible for taking a look to see if it will work for them.

Oswald Professional Engineers puts a massive emphasis on efficiency, which is why they have been using Mail Manager since the company was founded.

"Since its inception, information management has been a key initiative at Oswald Professional Engineers. Kenan says, “When we start new projects, we need to put together a protocol for each project - called a BIM protocol. We decide which software will be used, what common data environment, what methods of transferring data, and where our project information will be hosted. Then, once we get into the project, the design side includes the complex calculations and so on. I oversee all of that information.”

“I also handle a lot of 3D modelling work and rendering for clients who want to see the finished product before it’s built. Additionally, I do a lot of content creation - using Revit mainly—as well as create and keep the company BIM templates up to date.”

Kenan describes the decision to use Mail Manager as a no-brainer from the very start: “My boss started the company and immediately implemented Mail Manager from day one, as he understood the need and usage for it.”

"In a previous company Elbrecht Oswald (Director) and I had both worked at, we'd used Mail Manager in our last few years there. Before that, I spent the first three years having constant complaints from the Director about finding information in emails. Clients would call him asking him about certain information on their project and he would frantically need to stumble through his emails. All of a sudden, Mail Manager was installed on our computers and we were told we need to use it. We saw the benefits immediately - project information was findable and visible, located in organised project folders.”

“When Elbrecht Oswald started Oswald Engineers Inc, he knew he couldn't rely on manual email management, so he decided we needed Mail Manager from day one. In the meantime, I went to another company that didn’t have Mail Manager and spent the next two years going back to manual email management, trying to organise my inbox so I didn’t miss any information. The primary problem was I couldn’t store sent emails so I could never find things I’d sent. So much information got lost and I’d regularly come across things that needed actioning two weeks ago - and I was a pretty meticulous email user! I don’t have a clue how some of my other colleagues managed their email.”

Kenan was relieved to find Mail Manager being used at Oswald Professional Engineers when he joined: “From day one I could store every single item I sent to the right project folder. We have the ability to search the email content for keywords. The way that Mail Manager breaks it down with the detailed search bar is really valuable.”

“When we get new hires, getting them up and running with Mail Manager is just a 5-10 minute conversation. After that, they are using it perfectly with very little training and input from me. Everyone here knows that data is important.”

Mail Manager is essential to the way Oswald Professional Engineering works. Kenan describes the benefits: “The ultimate benefit is you don’t need to think about filing your email. The notification pops up to file your email and cleverly suggests the right project folder to put it in - I don’t have to think about it. It’s the ease of doing it. No duplicates anywhere and it’s saved safely in the project folder."

 

Secondly, everyone in the company goes to the same project location. So, I can find information from my own computer, even if the email wasn’t sent to me previously. Without Mail Manager, we’d have to manually be conscious about our email management, which is a complicated and time-consuming process. It would cost me an extra hours’ work a day.”

“If an engineer resigns and we replaced them, we could easily have that new person up to speed on the projects really easily. We can just say, you are now taking over this project, this is the email folder location, if you need something, search this location. It makes our jobs a lot more simplified and standardised.”

"To anyone considering Mail Manager, Kenan says, “Take the trial and use it. And then try and go back. It’s like giving someone who rides a horse to work a car to use for a few days, and then saying they have to go back to the horse.”

“Mail Manager has taken away a lot of pressure from my shoulders, using the efficiency of the software to store all project information in one place, for all of us collectively as a company.”