On the road in East Africa
Close communication with customers in East Africa is a key part of Manuel Balmer’s job. The International Sales Engineer found a solution for a luxury hotel in Nairobi through his extensive network.
An International Sales Engineer spends a lot of his working time – around 20 to 30 percent – travelling for business. This requires plumbing experts with a talent for languages who don’t mind being separated from their loved ones for several days and weeks at a time. Manuel Balmer is such a person. The 34-year-old knows the plumbing trade and learned everything from scratch. Since April 2018, the Swiss native has been supporting the sales offices in the East Africa region with his sanitary expertise and his talent for sales.
In March 2021, he travelled to Kenya and Uganda for two months with the main task of launching Geberit products on the market with his small yet effective local team.
In a tight spot in Nairobi
The Sovent fitting
With the Sovent fitting installed in the drainage line, the water is converted into an annular flow with a column of air created in the centre. As a result, the building owners were able to dispense with the ventilation pipe, which runs in parallel to the drainage pipe and takes up space.
The team supervises several exciting construction projects across the region, including the luxury “9 Oak Apartments” in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. This posed a real challenge as the concrete building structure was almost complete by the time Geberit was first contacted. However, the pipe ducts for drainage were not designed optimally and were too small for the country-specific laying of the discharge stacks. Fortunately, Manuel Balmer had a solution on hand. This solution – Sovent – proved the most economical for the dilemma in Nairobi.
The team carried out training directly on the construction site, which gave the plumbers added confidence when installing the pipes. Meanwhile, regular visits to the construction site gave the building owner added peace of mind. 2,300 metres of PE-HD pipes and 110 welded Sovent fittings later, and the luxury apartments are now awaiting completion and their first residents.
2,300
metres
of Geberit PE-HD pipes were installed at the luxury hotel.