Mr. Athanacious Sebolla Makgamatha is the General Manager Signalling and Telecommunications in the Strategic Asset Development (SAD) Signals & Telecoms (S&T) department at PRASA Corporate Office. Athanacious holds master’s degree in computer systems Engineering and master’s in business administration (MBA). He is acting as the Head of Engineering under PRASA Technical Division. As a senior technologist and project lead, Athanacious is responsible for the development and support of systems and processes related to signaling systems, rail bound telecommunications, spatial asset register, infrastructure asset maintenance management, and other asset operations management. His extensive background in Telecommunications, Signaling, and Asset Optimization includes projects involving strategic asset modernization and maintenance, as well as operations management.
Athanacious Makgamatha has extensive experience in many aspects of asset management, maintenance and research & technology (R&D). He has contracting and consulting experience with large public sector infrastructure owners as well as in the private sector. He oversaw several large projects in the country, including the 2010 SWC related & key operations, Swaziland on physical asset identification. To name a few, he oversaw the transfer of the Gautrain Rapid Rail System to the Gautrain Management Agency (GMA), as well as the componentization of the GRAP 17 asset registers. He led the Gauteng Re-Signalling Projects Infrastructure Modernization Programme, Global Systems for Mobile Communications – Railways (GSM-R), European Train Control Systems (ETCS) Pilot Section, validation of Electric Multiple Units (EMU) Gibela Trains, and Optic Fibre Network Programmes, all fully implemented handed over to operations.
Athanacious has served on several technical steering committees as an advisor and in the selection of technology. He successfully combined his engineering and technology management expertise to create several business requirements, technical design specifications, and maintenance management process design. He has successfully served as Quality Assurance, Technical Officer, and Project Manager on several multi-disciplinary projects.