Litnet

Giel Bekker was born in the Free State town of Senekal and matriculated at the local Paul Erasmus High School. He studied mechanical engineering at the University of Pretoria and went on to complete a master’s degree at the University of Johannesburg as well as an HBA and MBA at the University of Stellenbosch.

In 2007 he completed a PhD in project management at the University of Pretoria, specialising in project governance. He is also a registered professional engineer.

After completing his military service he started his career as an assistant design engineer at Sasol and progressed to the role of project portfolio manager. During this time he also spent one year in Munich, Germany as part of a project team on a chemical plant. In July 2000 he established the project management firm ProjectWay which has since completed more than 300 studies and projects in the mining, telecommunications, infrastructure, building, healthcare, automotive and agriculture sectors.

During 2000 he started lecturing on the Masters in Project Management programme at the University of Pretoria and has thus far supervised more than 120 master’s and PhD students. He is a recipient of the Erasmus Mundus Scholarship and has lectured at Herriot-Watt Business School in Scotland, Vilnius Technical University, Lithuania as well as Umea Business School, Sweden. He has published various papers on project management in national and international journals and presented at conferences across the globe.

Giel represented South Africa on the panel that developed the ISO 21500 standards on project management and acted as group leader for the ISO 21505 on project, programme and portfolio governance. He served as president of PMI Mpumalanga in the 1990s and is co-founder and current president of the Construction Industry Institute – Africa Chapter. He is part of the Private-Public-Growth Initiative on the Construction Sector and was awarded the PMSA Excellence Award for outstanding performance in project execution.

He is married to Evandré and they have two grown sons. He enjoys all sport, camping, photography and hunting. A single handicap golfer he was also chairman of the University of Pretoria Golf Club.