Itumeleng Moagi- The worst of times, the best of times.
Itumeleng Moagi has 12 years’ experience in the Construction, Health and Safety (CHS) environment. He is employed as a Professional Health and Safety Agent (PrCHSA) by Incident Prevention Solutions (IPS). He also serves as a CHS Assessor and interview panelist as well as a mentor for Candidate Health and Safety Agents.
Itumeleng grew up in a one-room house with both his parents and brother in 2nd Avenue in Alexandra Township. His dad was a fashionable, short tempered, serious hustler from an insanely impoverished background. His father tried everything under the sun to put food on the table, including migrating to Mafikeng without informing his mom that he will be starting a business there. “I guess that’s who I learned my entrepreneurial skills from. My mom, the fashionable, smart, very strict and financially savvy nucleus of my life, is the reason why I save and invest consistently every month. My brother is a handsomely fashionable, very generous and intelligent ladies’ man”.
Humble beginnings
“I worked for the Free State Provincial Department of Health as an environmental health practitioner and if I did not take bribes then, I don’t think I would now. My deliverables included occupational health inspections, food safety, water monitoring, compliance management and port health services; all with the aim of minimizing environmental health and safety impacts. I then worked for a small firm in Vanderbijlpark - GSRC Management - that was doing SHE consultative work for Iscor (now Arcelor Mittal) around the country. The pleasure of working for a small firm is that you become an all-rounder. A big firm teaches you systems while a small firm teaches you the assembly of meat on a skeleton.”
Itumeleng was then poached by Murray and Roberts Construction to join them in their Education, Training and Development department. What was beautiful about that experience was that it taught him construction, from brick setting right through to project commissioning. He had a dual responsibility, being both a trainer and a site CHS practitioner. Itumeleng later left Murray and Roberts Construction and joined IPS (Incident Prevention Solutions), a small CHS consulting firm based in Johannesburg and Mafikeng.
Read more in SACPCMP’s Shape Shifter magazine