Puya Rasekhi (DLMBA 2001-05) was a major player in the recent success of the World Cup in South Africa although he never appeared in any of the matches. Puya is an Associate Director at Arup in South Africa and head of Arup Major Projects Africa.

He explains: A major portion of Arup's input in establishing the South Africa's stadiums to world class standard, revolved around ensuring there would be no power cuts during any of the 64 scheduled games. Arup was contracted by the FIFA Local Organising Committee to perform the engineering, procurement, construction and operations management of all backup and technical power for both overlay and broadcasting needs. The key to achieving this was consultation at a national level with Eskom (South Africa's Power Utility), the local utilities, host cities and international firms dealing with temporary and event power.

Arup also provided, on behalf of FIFA and the Department of Energy, audits of the existing power supply systems at every stadium to determine the requirements of each individual venue, and advice on appropriate measures required to mitigate risks and ensure adherence to FIFA standard requirements for quality power supply.

"Arup had over 30 people involved in this project, with one senior engineer and one supervisor at every stadium ensuring work was carried out with quality and on time. During the events Arup was in charge of all power related matters. If anything went wrong with power, the Arup lead engineer at the stadium was contacted. He would then liaise with the stadium engineers, electrical contractors and Eskom to ensure the problem was resolved.

"It was a mammoth task: We had between three to four matches to manage every day for over two weeks across the whole country, with intense operations both before and after the match. The lights had to be on four and a half hours before the match started, and all systems needed to be checked. After the match the lights remained on for a further two hours. Then after Match Day we had de-brief meetings and reports to FIFA, repair and maintenance of power units and re-fuelling of generators to deal with."