Kenny Nkwana

Kenny Nkwana
Executive Director: Facilities Management, University of Johannesburg

Kenny Nkwana is Executive Director: Facilities Management at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). He leads the division that builds, maintains and runs the University's buildings and infrastructure across its campuses. It has six departments: Campus Facilities Management, Central Technical Services, Property Management, Occupational Health and Safety, Logistics, and Sustainability, Environment and Utilities.

He is a mechanical engineer by background with about 30 years' experience across the petrochemical, manufacturing, energy, mining and construction sectors. His work has covered operations and maintenance, project and portfolio management, contract management and plant commissioning. He began in air-conditioning design and construction, then worked in projects and maintenance at Sasol. He was next an engineer, project manager and contracts manager at EagleBurgmann. He then spent more than a decade at Eskom as Contracts and Project Portfolio Manager, before leading his own businesses, including the consultancy Proresis.

At UJ, his division completed 27 capital and priority projects in 2023, including 12 new lecture venues and the Rescue Simulation Centre on the Doornfontein Campus. It also:

• raised planned maintenance compliance from 76% to 93%
• reduced the impact of load shedding with solar power and backup generators
• brought in UJ's first electric buses
• began the grey-water recycling work that led to the Auckland Park Kingsway Campus plant.

Mr Nkwana holds an MBA from the University of the Witwatersrand and a BSc (Management) from the University of Pretoria. He also trains others in project and contract management, and works as an executive, leadership and career coach.