Freek holds a master’s degree in chemical engineering and has more than 40 years’ experience. Freek has been involved in gas- and coal-to-liquids projects since 1998. He was the engineering manager on the Qatar and Nigeria GTL plants during the front-end loading phase. During this time, various other GTL and CTL studies were also undertaken in areas like the North Sea, Australia, Angola, Canada, USA, India, China and South Africa. Starting in 2006 he was the technical director responsible for the clean fuels EURO II implementation in Secunda as well as the later EURO IV Concept studies both for Secunda and the Natref refinery. The upgrading of the Temane / Pande Central processing facility, the ROMPCO pipeline and the expansion of the Secunda CTL plant to accommodate the additional natural gas was also concluded under his technical guidance.

Freek is co-author of a book on programme management.

Freek’s areas of expertise include:

• Multi-discipline engineering management
• Project management frameworks and models
• Project stage-gate processes
• Role of the owner project team
• New Business Development
• Project engineering quality management and project auditing
• Ensuring that strategic business objectives are met
• Integration of complex petrochemical megaprojects
• Project scope development, tracking and management
• Project risk management.