{"updatedAt":"2026-07-12T17:16:59.012Z","source":"Notion-backed personal website","profile":{"name":"Arno Scholtz","title":"Operations leader | Engineering systems | AI-enabled execution","bio":"Operations and engineering leader scaling IoT and energy hardware from early deployments to 15,000+ field units. I build the operating systems behind that scale: supply chain, contract manufacturing, logistics, field operations, BI, AI tooling, fleet monitoring, and team processes that make delivery measurable and repeatable.","email":"scholtzap@gmail.com","location":"Cape Town, South Africa"},"site":{"name":"Arno Scholtz | Operations, Engineering & AI Systems Portfolio","description":"Arno Scholtz's portfolio of operations leadership, engineering systems, AI tooling, IoT projects, business intelligence, and technical infrastructure.","url":"https://www.scholtz.dpdns.org","topics":["Arno Scholtz","operations leadership","engineering portfolio","AI systems","IoT operations","business intelligence","technical infrastructure","field operations","operational automation","Cape Town"]},"professionalExperience":[{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-81c5-8cfd-e86be1758edb","title":"People Leadership & Team Operations","roleOrTheme":"Leadership","period":"2012 - Present","description":"Led people systems across live-event operations, startup execution and multidisciplinary technical teams, with responsibility for hiring, coaching, performance management, team cadence and delivery rhythm under growth pressure.","highlights":"- 52 hires across BridgIoT and Plentify, spanning finance, support, operations, hardware, firmware and software roles.\n- 57 team members directly managed or coached across operational, technical, intern and contractor groups.\n- Built practical people-administration routines around contracts, onboarding records, leave policy, employment documentation and contractor/intern coordination.\n- Experience ranges from small tactical teams to large event crews of up to 200 people.\n- Handled structured feedback, performance processes and constrained-period retrenchment involvement with documentation discipline.","priority":1},{"id":"37be495d-9bdc-81da-81f0-ce13b65ac891","title":"Hardware Manufacturing & Deployment Scale-Up","roleOrTheme":"Operations","period":"2023 - present","description":"Scaled Plentify hardware operations from roughly 300 deployed devices to more than 15,000 deployed devices while supporting a much larger production and procurement pipeline. The work turned engineering handoff, firmware readiness, BOM ownership, supplier RFQs, outsourced manufacturing, in-house assembly scheduling, packaging, logistics, client delivery and installer readiness into a repeatable manufacturing cadence.","highlights":"- Took hardware and firmware outputs from engineering teams and converted them into manufacturable, procurable, schedulable production plans.\n- RFQ'd and procured complete BOMs across electronics components, printed material, packaging, boxes and supporting materials for HotBot v2, HotBot v3, WiFi Gateways, Solarbot and LTE dongle shields for HotBot v3.\n- Liaised with outsourced manufacturers on production timing, constraints, quality handover and delivery cadence.\n- Scheduled in-house assembly, packaging, logistics and installer-ready device handover without turning engineering output into an ad hoc scramble.\n- Built and used the production-planning app, after earlier Google Sheets planning, to support scenario planning, stockout visibility, procurement timing, BOM costing and manufacturing cadence.","priority":1.4},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-81bf-905d-d35615719723","title":"Investment Sourcing & Deal Execution","roleOrTheme":"Leadership","period":"2018 - 2023","description":"Led CEO-level investment, funding and commercialisation work for BridgIoT, turning post-CSI funding pressure into a formal capital, grant and strategic-partnership process while keeping external counterparties aligned to the company's delivery story.","highlights":"- Built investor narrative and diligence-ready materials after the Shoprite CSI funding gap.\n- Managed grant and institutional funding workflows, including submissions, supporting records, progress material and IDC/TIA-facing processes.\n- Advanced strategic conversations and captured deal lessons around timing, counterpart fit and term risk.\n- Structured JV and commercialisation work with Genric and TechITEZ in the SafeHomes context.\n- Supported the Macrocomm investment path and downstream transition into Livewire.","priority":2},{"id":"37be495d-9bdc-8133-aa18-de92ffbb0330","title":"Startup Finance, Governance & Company Administration","roleOrTheme":"Leadership","period":"2018 - 2023","description":"Owned BridgIoT's practical finance, governance and company-administration layer as a hardware startup: budgets, forecasts, supplier-payment process, payroll coordination, accounting handover, annual financial statements, audit support, board packs, board-meeting administration, company secretarial workflows and investment-ready records.","highlights":"- Liaised with external accountants on bookkeeping, annual financial statements, management accounts, audit support, completeness packs and supporting records.\n- Built and maintained budgets, expense plans and financial projections used for runway planning, operating decisions and board/investor context.\n- Managed operational finance administration across supplier-payment process, payroll coordination, reimbursements, COIDA/admin returns and supporting documentation.\n- Prepared board and governance material, supported board-meeting administration, maintained director/company records and handled practical company secretarial workflows.\n- Kept finance records usable for funder reporting and diligence without exposing confidential account, salary, valuation or board-pack detail publicly.","priority":2.2},{"id":"37be495d-9bdc-81eb-9bf1-e9d02454c4ed","title":"Device Stock, SIM & Subscription Operations","roleOrTheme":"Operations","period":"2018 - present","description":"Built and maintained the operating controls around connected-device fleets at BridgIoT and Plentify: hardware stock state, SIM records, recharge/subscription status, device identity data and deployment readiness across installed and install-ready assets.","highlights":"- BridgIoT: maintained stock, SIM, recharge, subscription and device-control records around smart water-meter and IoT deployments.\n- Plentify: extended the same discipline into a larger fleet context, connecting device records, connectivity visibility and deployment readiness.\n- Used spreadsheets, Airtable-style records and later custom tooling to reconcile device identity, stock state, connectivity status and field-readiness signals.\n- Helped support and operations teams answer practical questions: what exists, what is active, what is deployed, what is costing money and what needs attention.\n- Turned asset and connectivity records into an operational control layer rather than a collection of disconnected spreadsheets.","priority":2.3},{"id":"37be495d-9bdc-81d5-ae28-c0d9f96299ba","title":"Schools Water Programme Delivery","roleOrTheme":"Operations","period":"2017 - 2022","description":"Led programme delivery for BridgIoT's schools potable-water work with Shoprite CSI, WCED, maintenance partners, field contractors, school stakeholders and internal product/engineering teams. The work connected smart-meter hardware, dashboards, alerting, usage baselines, sponsor reporting and targeted maintenance into an operating system for reducing water wastage across hundreds of schools.","highlights":"- Helped turn Dropula smart water-meter data into practical operating workflows: baselines, leak and burst alerts, nighttime-flow diagnostics, school dashboards, sponsor reporting and maintenance prioritisation.\n- Coordinated the delivery model across hardware deployment, school onboarding, contractor scheduling, stakeholder communication and budget-aware maintenance decisions.\n- The later 2018 stakeholder report captured 342 schools, roughly 330,000 learners reached, 216M litres saved at that stage, 85% of schools showing day-to-day savings, and first-round maintenance improving usage at 81% of schools.\n- The wider programme later contributed to about 720M litres saved and about R52M in water savings realised.","priority":2.5},{"id":"34fe495d-9bdc-8185-aedb-d177b2a28252","title":"Ground-up OHS: BridgIoT to Plentify","roleOrTheme":"Operations","period":"2018 - Present","description":"Built occupational health and safety systems from a blank slate twice: first for BridgIoT under investor-visible startup conditions, then for Plentify's mixed warehouse, office, and water-electrical R&D site. In both cases the goal was a working operating system, not a policy file.","highlights":"- BridgIoT: built policy, HIRA, inspection, training, emergency, first-aid, fire, incident, SHE-rep, and document-control foundations.\n- Plentify: built H&S plans, legal appointments, competency evidence, risk assessments, safe-work procedures, toolbox talks, emergency preparedness, chemical and contractor controls, inspections, inductions, committee cadence, incident investigation, legal audit, and management review.\n- Converted compliance categories into recurring operating routines that teams could actually follow across warehouse, office, field and R&D environments.","priority":4}],"roles":[{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-81ac-a634-d7abfb6e445b","company":"Plentify","position":"Director of Operations","period":"2023 - present","location":"Cape Town, South Africa","website":"https://plentify.io/","imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=343e495d-9bdc-81ac-a634-d7abfb6e445b","summary":"Own operations for a distributed energy and IoT hardware business: procurement, supplier RFQs, outsourced manufacturing, in-house assembly, stock planning, SIM/connectivity visibility, logistics, field operations, customer service, facilities, health and safety, and the tooling used to manage scale. The role connects engineering and firmware handoff to completed packaged devices delivered to clients and installers, with systems built across forecasting, production planning, fleet monitoring and business intelligence.","highlights":"- Scaled deployed hardware from roughly 300 to 15,000+ field units and supported a much larger manufacturing and procurement pipeline through volatile demand.\n- Took hardware and firmware outputs from engineering teams and converted them into manufacturable, procurable, schedulable production plans.\n- RFQ'd and procured complete BOMs across electronics components, printed material, packaging and supporting materials for HotBot v2, HotBot v3, WiFi Gateways, Solarbot and LTE dongle shields for HotBot v3.\n- Liaised with outsourced manufacturers while scheduling in-house assembly, packaging, logistics and delivery readiness for clients and installers.\n- Managed stock planning, device readiness and SIM/connectivity visibility so physical hardware, recurring connectivity and deployment needs stayed aligned.\n- Personally built production-planning and working-capital tooling for scenario planning, stockout visibility, procurement timing, BOM costing, debt-coverage views and investor reporting.\n- Raised fleet monitoring capacity from about 2,500 to 15,000+ devices per operator-day through automation, diagnostics and better review workflows.","priority":1},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-811f-9ce1-ea7ec878a488","company":"3BO","position":"Product Owner","period":"Jun 2022 - Aug 2025","location":"South Africa (remote)","website":"https://www.3bo.mobi/","imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=343e495d-9bdc-811f-9ce1-ea7ec878a488","summary":"Product ownership for a bicycle and last-mile asset tracking platform focused on theft response, recovery workflows, WhatsApp command flows, dashboards, telemetry, and partner escalation. The role is product management, QA, backlog, workflow design, and launch alignment rather than sole engineering ownership.","highlights":"- Translated tracker, telemetry, WhatsApp, dashboard, and recovery-service needs into product requirements and delivery priorities.\n- Managed backlog trade-offs across customer experience, operational support, QA, security-company listener workflows, and launch readiness.\n- Kept public-facing product narrative aligned with what had been implemented, tested, or planned without overstating engineering ownership.","priority":2},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-81ae-b024-fea2c52064b4","company":"Livewire","position":"Head of Engineering Services","period":"2022 - 2023","location":"Cape Town, South Africa","website":"https://livewire.co.za/","imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=343e495d-9bdc-81ae-b024-fea2c52064b4","summary":"Led engineering-services delivery during BridgIoT's post-investment transition into Livewire, coordinating project management, field operations, delivery quality, and cross-team communication across smart-metering and utility-data work.","highlights":"- Led engineering and field teams through high-pressure delivery windows after the BridgIoT transition.\n- Improved cross-team communication, delivery cadence, and visibility across engineering services and operations.\n- Initiated hiring across six roles in technical, support, and operational functions.","priority":3},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-815e-81a4-cfaf633c873f","company":"BridgIoT","position":"CEO","period":"2018 - 2023","location":"Cape Town, South Africa","website":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2212428420300190","imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=343e495d-9bdc-815e-81a4-cfaf633c873f","summary":"Led BridgIoT through hardware, software, finance and field-service execution: smart water-metering deployments, schools water-saving programme delivery, product and dashboard development, sponsor and partner reporting, team and contractor coordination, company finance, board/governance administration, fundraising and strategic transition into Livewire.","highlights":"- Led the Shoprite CSI/WCED schools water-saving programme from real operational delivery into stakeholder reporting, not merely retrospective documentation.\n- Scaled Dropula smart water-metering across roughly 350 schools with usage baselines, dashboards, leak and burst alerts, nighttime-flow diagnostics, sponsor reporting and targeted maintenance workflows.\n- Programme contributed to about 720 million litres of water saved and about R52m in water savings realised; the Oct 2018 stakeholder report captured 342 schools, roughly 330,000 learners reached, and 216M litres saved at that stage.\n- Owned startup finance and administration across budgets, forecasts, supplier payments, payroll coordination, annual financial statements, audit support, board packs and company secretarial workflows.\n- Deployed roughly R15m in project funding, managed grant/funding administration and secured strategic investment from Macrocomm.\n- Structured commercialisation and legal pathways with Genric and TechITEZ in the SafeHomes context.","priority":4},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-8149-8537-f67f128ea18f","company":"Stellenbosch University","position":"Lab Manager & Research Assistant","period":"2017 - 2018","location":"Stellenbosch, South Africa","website":"https://www0.sun.ac.za/mateng/","imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=343e495d-9bdc-8149-8537-f67f128ea18f","summary":"Managed materials-science laboratory operations while supporting research and student work: equipment scheduling, microscopy and testing workflows, maintenance, procurement, user training, and research assistance in a mechanical and mechatronic engineering environment.","highlights":"- Coordinated equipment access, maintenance, procurement, and user support across laboratory workflows.\n- Supported materials-science research with sample preparation, testing, microscopy, and technical documentation.\n- Trained users on lab procedures and helped keep research work moving through constrained equipment capacity.","priority":5},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-81b8-a274-d78a2c334ddc","company":"Nutickets & Howler","position":"Manager","period":"2012 - 2017","location":"South Africa","website":"https://www.howler.co.za/","imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=343e495d-9bdc-81b8-a274-d78a2c334ddc","summary":"Managed event technology operations for ticketing and cashless payment deployments across live events, coordinating temporary crews, hardware readiness, access control, cashups, reconciliation, client support, and post-event reporting.","highlights":"- Led staffing, shift planning, hardware readiness, and on-site operational control across event deployments.\n- Handled cashups, reconciliation, client support, issue response, and post-event reporting.\n- Built early operating discipline across temporary teams, physical hardware, and high-pressure live environments.","priority":6},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-813c-86a3-f539e10097c1","company":"Dirtopia","position":"Event Operations Crew","period":"2012 - 2017","location":"Stellenbosch, South Africa","website":"https://www.dirtopia.co.za/","imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=343e495d-9bdc-813c-86a3-f539e10097c1","summary":"Supported trail running and mountain biking event operations through physical setup, breakdown, water-station logistics, and on-the-ground race-day support. This early operations work built practical discipline around temporary teams, outdoor event constraints, and physical execution under time pressure.","highlights":"- Performed physical setup and breakdown for trail running and cycling events.\n- Set up and cleared water stations for participants and crews.\n- Supported on-the-ground event logistics and manual operations across race days.","priority":7}],"education":[{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-816a-adca-df198863022e","institution":"Stellenbosch University","degree":"MEng","field":"Materials Science (Cum Laude)","period":"2016 - 2018","location":"Stellenbosch, South Africa","details":"- Cum Laude master's degree with postgraduate project: MEng Copper Infiltration Study, focused on copper sinter-infiltration for conventional ferrous powder metallurgy.\n- The project combined pusher-furnace refurbishment, process-gas calibration, delubrication experiments, transient atmosphere control, metallographic preparation, SEM/EDS microscopy, defect diagnosis, and process-guideline development.\n- Strengthened materials, manufacturing, test-method, furnace-control, and failure-analysis grounding that still informs hardware operations, supplier discussions, process validation, and design-for-manufacture decisions.","priority":1},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-81ad-a55c-ccd5ceb014f8","institution":"Stellenbosch University","degree":"BEng","field":"Mechanical Engineering","period":"2012 - 2015","location":"Stellenbosch, South Africa","details":"- Mechanical engineering degree with final-year project: BEng FAST Apparatus Refinement, a refinement and validation of a low-power Field Assisted Sintering Technique research apparatus.\n- The project combined mechanical redesign, FEM and COMSOL multiphysics modelling, electrical/sealing repairs, graphite punch commissioning, sintering trials, density testing, microscopy, and techno-economic reporting.\n- Built practical grounding in mechanical design, CAD, experimental setup, technical communication, budget discipline, and engineering trade-offs before moving into operations and hardware-business execution.","priority":2},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-816b-a0c7-c0cad63c74e7","institution":"WADA / Anti-Doping Training","degree":"Anti-doping Course","field":"Sport Integrity and Compliance","period":"Sep 2025","location":"International","details":"Sourced from Airtable Document Storage & Renewal.","priority":53},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-81f7-827e-ced7cfc5c781","institution":"World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF)","degree":"WFDF Advanced Rules Accreditation","field":"Sport Rules Accreditation","period":"Sep 2025","location":"International","details":"Sourced from Airtable Document Storage & Renewal.","priority":54},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-814a-b135-ddd537ea303f","institution":"World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF)","degree":"WFDF Standard Rules Accreditation","field":"Sport Rules Accreditation","period":"Sep 2018","location":"International","details":"Sourced from Airtable Document Storage & Renewal.","priority":55},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-81a0-94bc-e6dd677b4f84","institution":"Department of Transport","degree":"Driver's License (Code B)","field":"Transport","period":"Jan 2011","location":"South Africa","details":"Licensed Code B driver.","priority":56},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-812b-bf21-e15d75995334","institution":"First-Aid Training SA","degree":"First Aid","field":"First Aid","period":"Apr 2017 - Apr 2020","location":"South Africa","details":"Credential ID: 17/7086.","priority":57},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-8101-9b08-cb0af0991e85","institution":"South African Police Service (SAPS)","degree":"Firearm Competency","field":"Firearms Handling","period":"Jul 2017 - Jul 2022","location":"South Africa","details":"Credential ID: C7432438.","priority":58},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-8195-9df0-f46bebaa5384","institution":"NAUI Worldwide","degree":"NAUI Open Water Scuba Diver","field":"Diving","period":"May 2017","location":"International","details":"Credential ID: 2237B736-0327-4816-AA53-2100053871FB.","priority":59},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-815c-bcd7-e1920c897231","institution":"Killarney Training Centre","degree":"Killarney Advanced Driving Course on Defensive Driving","field":"Defensive Driving","period":"Oct 2016 - Oct 2018","location":"South Africa","details":"Credential ID: 8801/10/16.","priority":60},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-81d0-bfd8-c2f3a57c7ea4","institution":"South African Maritime Safety Authority","degree":"Short Range VHF Radio","field":"Radio Operation","period":"Jun 2017","location":"South Africa","details":"Credential ID: SRC - CTN - 0000002530.","priority":61},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-81ce-b7ac-cff08a1a3cff","institution":"Department of Labour","degree":"Maritime Emergency Care","field":"First Aid","period":"Sep 2017 - Sep 2020","location":"South Africa","details":"Credential ID: MEC/09/161.","priority":62},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-817d-86b1-d4d3cb11e0ad","institution":"Koeberg Emergency Services Training Centre","degree":"Basic Fire Fighting","field":"Emergency Response","period":"Jul 2017 - Jul 2020","location":"South Africa","details":"Credential ID: NSRI 10 2/2017.","priority":63},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-811c-b38c-f9e84e2fc170","institution":"PADI","degree":"Advanced Open Water Scuba Diver","field":"Diving","period":"May 2023","location":"International","details":"Credential ID: 2305UL1442.","priority":64},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-81f2-ad63-d568f5aa3638","institution":"South African Whale Disentanglement Network","degree":"Whale Disentanglement","field":"Marine Safety","period":"Feb 2018","location":"South Africa","details":"Specialized marine rescue and disentanglement training.","priority":65},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-81dc-913e-f99f32a2d2bd","institution":"Stellenbosch University Language Centre","degree":"Scientific Writing","field":"Report Writing","period":"Sep 2016","location":"Stellenbosch, South Africa","details":"Formal training in scientific and technical writing.","priority":66},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-81a9-bc4b-e1808b8aec66","institution":"South African Maritime Safety Authority","degree":"National Small Vessel Certificate of Competence (Skippers)","field":"Maritime Operations","period":"Sep 2018","location":"South Africa","details":"Credential ID: SVC-0049079-S.","priority":67},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-81bc-9d7b-dfcbbbefc9e8","institution":"Moonstone Business School of Excellence","degree":"POPIA","field":"Data Protection and Compliance","period":"Apr 2023","location":"South Africa","details":"Completed POPIA compliance training.","priority":68},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-8169-bc3f-ec75227f5053","institution":"BE MORE with Anu","degree":"Breaking Bias Foundations - Plentify","field":"Inclusive Leadership","period":"Oct 2024","location":"Online","details":"Credential ID: hlywudzeg2.","priority":69},{"id":"343e495d-9bdc-815c-941c-ecc8620df291","institution":"Coursera","degree":"Animal Behaviour and Welfare","field":"Animal Behavior and Ethology","period":"Oct 2016","location":"Online","details":"Course exploring animal welfare science across agriculture, research, and pets. Focus on behavioral, physiological, and psychological welfare assessment and ethical principles.","priority":70}],"projects":[{"title":"BridgIoT / Shoprite CSI Schools Water Programme","description":"Led real programme delivery for BridgIoT's schools potable-water work with Shoprite CSI, WCED and maintenance partners. Dropula meters were rolled out across hundreds of schools, while dashboards translated pulse data into baselines, leak and burst alerts, nighttime-flow diagnostics, sponsor reporting and targeted maintenance decisions. A later 2018 stakeholder report captured the operating model at scale: 342 schools and roughly 330,000 learners reached, 216M litres saved at that stage, 85% of schools showing day-to-day savings, and first-round maintenance improving usage at 81% of schools. The programme later contributed to about 720M litres saved and about R52M in water savings.","techStack":["IoT","Water metering","Hardware","Operations","CSR","Project Management"],"url":null,"liveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveLabel":null,"githubUrl":null,"imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=37be495d-9bdc-81ea-b074-c155cadab413"},{"title":"Production Planning & Stockout Simulator","description":"Personally built a production-planning and stockout simulator for hardware operations where demand, inventory, BOMs, supplier lead times and cash constraints all move at once. The Python/Streamlit app turns deployment plans, component stock, assembly BOMs, on-order inventory, minimum stock levels and supplier constraints into scenario-based production, procurement, stockout, cost and monthly reporting outputs. It replaced fragile spreadsheet-only planning with repeatable what-if runs, persisted scenarios, downloadable reports, BOM cost visibility and a simulation engine that can run through the UI or headlessly. Built in a real manufacturing context and presented as my own operations-software build, not as a commercial product listing.","techStack":["Software Development","Operations","Forecasting","Budgeting","Product Ownership"],"url":"https://github.com/scholtzap/production-planning","liveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveLabel":null,"githubUrl":"https://github.com/scholtzap/production-planning","imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=37be495d-9bdc-8133-90b9-e18728e6df41"},{"title":"Plentify: Fleet Monitoring Product Ownership","description":"Led product ownership for Plentify's fleet monitoring workflow, moving daily hardware, sensor, connectivity, and heating checks from manual review toward automated detection, triage, and reporting. The work improved issue labeling, operator UX, metrics, detection logic, support handoffs, and feedback loops for data-science refinement. It helped the same team scale from monitoring roughly 2,500 units manually to more than 14,500 deployed devices across 80+ deployments, with automated daily rollups, clearer escalation workflows, better reporting, and a continuously improving labeled dataset.","techStack":["Software Development","IoT","Operations","Project Management","Product Ownership"],"url":null,"liveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveLabel":null,"githubUrl":null,"imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=34de495d-9bdc-8116-804e-f54fc6462fe7"},{"title":"Plentify: Metabase & fleet analytics","description":"Deployed and shaped a team-owned Metabase business-intelligence platform for Plentify fleet operations, then documented the operational databases well enough to make self-service analytics practical. The work included Follower and Precog data models, canonical joins, glossary terms, metric definitions, SQL quality checks, backup and extraction workflows, dashboard plans, communications rollups, and reliability-reporting pipelines. That documentation enabled safer natural-language SQL generation and reduced dependence on a costly bespoke analytics build: the result was a modifiable, owned, widely used BI capability that could evolve with the business.","techStack":["Operations","Internal tooling","Software Development","IoT","BI","SQL"],"url":"https://www.metabase.com/","liveUrl":"https://www.metabase.com/","secondaryLiveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveLabel":null,"githubUrl":"https://github.com/scholtzap/metabase-plentify","imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=341e495d-9bdc-8135-96f7-d511dd5ac65a"},{"title":"3BO Bicycle & Lastmile Telematics Tracking","description":"Product-managed 3BO, a WhatsApp-first bicycle and last-mile asset tracking platform built around rapid theft response. The product scope covered embedded Teltonika tracker configuration, GPS telemetry ingestion, AWS serverless processing, MongoDB device and ride state, WhatsApp alerts and commands, recovery-partner escalation, React/TypeScript customer and admin dashboards, Metabase analytics, onboarding, and FOTA operations. My role was product framing, roadmap and backlog management, workflow definition, stakeholder alignment, QA coordination, and launch readiness across hardware, backend, messaging, analytics, and recovery workstreams.","techStack":["IoT","Hardware","Operations","Software Development","Product Ownership","Project Management","Mechanical Engineering"],"url":"https://www.3bo.mobi/","liveUrl":"https://www.3bo.mobi/","secondaryLiveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveLabel":null,"githubUrl":"https://github.com/3BO-Track","imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=343e495d-9bdc-8130-9ee7-c13790d2698c"},{"title":"Avocado Legal Corpus: retrieval infrastructure","description":"Deployed and operate Avocado Legal Corpus, a South African legal retrieval platform that turns public legal sources into searchable, cited evidence. The system discovers and registers source URLs, downloads PDFs and HTML, processes layout-aware OCR, splits gazettes, manages review queues, and schedules vector ingestion from a registry of more than 100,000 source records. It chunks files with page metadata, embeds them with BGE, upserts Qdrant collections, exposes health/search/status APIs, and serves MCP tools that return quoted legal passages with citations rather than generic AI answers.","techStack":["Software Development","Internal tooling","SQL","Operations","AI Engineering","RAG"],"url":"https://github.com/scholtzap/dify","liveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveLabel":null,"githubUrl":"https://github.com/scholtzap/dify","imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=375e495d-9bdc-81a0-bf5b-f8cc0d7011e4"},{"title":"Vis: Cape Town diving visibility forecaster","description":"Built Vis, a Cape Peninsula diving-visibility forecasting system that combines field reports, marine conditions, coastal geometry, and review workflows into a practical forecasting pipeline. It mines WhatsApp, social, and public dive observations, routes labels through a Streamlit reviewer, enriches them with Open-Meteo and Copernicus history, and trains physics-first ML and analog models. The system produces a water-filtered H3 shore-diving grid, +6h to +72h forecasts, MVT/GeoJSON artifacts, access and MPA masks, and product contracts for a future map experience.","techStack":["Software Development","Forecasting","AI Engineering","Operations","Internal tooling"],"url":"https://github.com/scholtzap/diving-visibility","liveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveLabel":null,"githubUrl":"https://github.com/scholtzap/diving-visibility","imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=375e495d-9bdc-811e-960e-e0dcabefb69c"},{"title":"MEng Copper Infiltration Study","description":"Completed the Cum Laude MEng project \"A study of copper infiltration for conventional ferrous powder metallurgy\" at Stellenbosch University. The research commissioned and refurbished a pusher furnace, calibrated process-gas controls, studied delubrication behaviour, and compared furnace operating strategies for copper sinter-infiltration of ferrous powder-metallurgy samples. It combined furnace modification, thermal analysis, controlled atmosphere experiments, sectioning, polishing, SEM/EDS microscopy, defect diagnosis, and process-guideline development to explain black residue, copper pooling, copper balling, and infiltration reliability.","techStack":["Mechanical Engineering","Materials","Hardware","Project Management"],"url":null,"liveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveLabel":null,"githubUrl":null,"imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=379e495d-9bdc-817e-8279-d16b385b85c1"},{"title":"SIM Platform Integration: fleet connectivity intelligence","description":"Built a multi-provider SIM operations platform for Plentify fleet connectivity work. The system integrates 1oT, SIM Control, Hologram, and Telit data; normalizes ICCID, EID, and IMEI identifiers; exports Follower database snapshots; validates cross-source SIM assignments; detects stale or unassociated SIMs; and analyzes deployment distance, network operators, and hourly connectivity. It now includes a Flask workflow API, async job tracking, downloadable outputs, Google Sheets refresh support, a Flutter web interface, and a path from CSV analysis to scheduled monitoring.","techStack":["Software Development","Operations","Internal tooling","IoT","SQL","BI"],"url":null,"liveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveLabel":null,"githubUrl":null,"imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=375e495d-9bdc-815f-a2cd-dc50bf507866"},{"title":"BEng FAST Apparatus Refinement","description":"Built and validated the final-year BEng project \"Refinement of a FAST (Field Assisted Sintering Technique) Apparatus\" at Stellenbosch University. The work assessed an existing low-power sintering rig, redesigned the force actuation system, repaired sealing and electrical paths, commissioned new graphite punches, and used FEM plus COMSOL multiphysics modelling to understand stress, resistance, and temperature limits. The apparatus successfully sintered a cobalt sample, supported microscopy and density analysis, and showed that FAST research could be performed with a smaller, lower-cost power supply than commercial systems.","techStack":["Mechanical Engineering","Materials","Hardware","Project Management"],"url":null,"liveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveLabel":null,"githubUrl":null,"imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=379e495d-9bdc-81bc-991e-d1526f329fdd"},{"title":"Beach Ultimate Weather Dashboards","description":"Built a pair of location-specific Beach Ultimate weather dashboards for Clifton in Cape Town and Praia da Rocha in Portimao. The dashboards share one static GitHub Pages pattern with location configuration, automated data refreshes, generated HTML, weather and tide data, busyness signals, and lightweight charting for players deciding when conditions are worth a game. The project also solved the multi-repo maintenance problem: Clifton and Praia stay aligned through shared scripts, matching workflows, documented secrets, and a repeatable deployment process while keeping each public page location-specific.","techStack":["AI Engineering","Software Development"],"url":"https://scholtzap.github.io/Clifton-Beach-Frisbee-Weather-Dashboard/","liveUrl":"https://scholtzap.github.io/Clifton-Beach-Frisbee-Weather-Dashboard/","secondaryLiveUrl":"https://scholtzap.github.io/Praia-da-Rocha-Beach-Ultimate-Weather-Dashboard/","secondaryLiveLabel":"Praia da Rocha dashboard","githubUrl":"https://github.com/scholtzap/Clifton-Beach-Frisbee-Weather-Dashboard","imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=339e495d-9bdc-8176-b4f5-ebfb0ef20ed9"},{"title":"Our Wardrobe","description":"Built Our Wardrobe, a Flutter and Firebase app for private friend groups and families to catalogue clothes and swap outfits. Shared wardrobes support invites, multi-photo item catalogues, borrow requests, active loan tracking, and email notifications, with Google and Apple sign-in plus a Firebase Hosting web deploy. The harder part is the data model: canonical owned items link into multiple shared wardrobes so garments stay owned by the person who listed them while still appearing in group closets. The result is a production personal product with CI, automated web deploys, and a live Firebase Hosting app rather than a throwaway mock.","techStack":["Software Development","DIY"],"url":"https://our-wardrobe.web.app","liveUrl":"https://our-wardrobe.web.app","secondaryLiveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveLabel":null,"githubUrl":null,"imageUrl":"https://our-wardrobe.web.app/assets/assets/icon/app_icon.png"},{"title":"Vacation rental websites: Hiddingh Village & Camps Bay Vistas","description":"Built two production rental-property websites, Hiddingh Village and Camps Bay Vistas, from a reusable Next.js and Cloudflare deployment pattern. Each site has its own brand, domain, map link, inquiry flow, Notion-managed content, and Google Drive image gallery, while sharing the same reliable publishing model. The result is a repeatable small-property website system: owners can update copy and imagery through familiar tools, and each public site remains fast, maintainable, and tailored to the property instead of becoming a fragile one-off static page.","techStack":["Software Development","Internal tooling","Operations"],"url":"https://hiddingh-village.scholtz.dpdns.org","liveUrl":"https://hiddingh-village.scholtz.dpdns.org","secondaryLiveUrl":"https://campsbayvistas.co.za","secondaryLiveLabel":"Camps Bay Vistas live site","githubUrl":"https://github.com/scholtzap/hiddingh-village","imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=379e495d-9bdc-817b-853f-db0f6f8ae086"},{"title":"OpenClaw Personal: self-hosted multi-agent operations platform","description":"Built and operate OpenClaw Personal, a self-hosted multi-agent operations platform that coordinates specialist assistants across research, task management, retrieval, compliance, procurement, and infrastructure workflows. The project brings together agent identities, model fallback tiers, MCP integrations, skills, plugins, deployment automation, scheduled maintenance, and knowledge-map tooling into one governed runtime. Its value is not another chatbot; it is a durable personal automation layer with clear responsibilities, auditable workflows, and reusable integration patterns.","techStack":["Software Development","Operations","Internal tooling","AI Engineering","RAG"],"url":null,"liveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveLabel":null,"githubUrl":null,"imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=375e495d-9bdc-8188-889f-dcf588341e35"},{"title":"Edgecore Interface: AP/client monitoring","description":"Built an Edgecore ecCLOUD monitoring interface for Plentify fleet operations. The system polls managed access-point sites, records AP health and last-contact status, captures wireless client association snapshots, detects association, disassociation, and roaming events, and enriches MAC observations against fleet records. The first production workflow runs as a scheduled daily sync with review tabs for AP status, current associations, event history, poll audit, and registry data, establishing the data model for higher-frequency monitoring when needed.","techStack":["Software Development","Operations","Internal tooling","IoT","SQL"],"url":null,"liveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveLabel":null,"githubUrl":null,"imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=375e495d-9bdc-81fd-b34a-c96a4c80a5f5"},{"title":"Notion-backed Personal Website","description":"Built this Notion-backed personal website as a structured public portfolio rather than a hand-edited resume page. Notion is the content system for projects, experience, skills, and profile data; the Next.js site renders that content into a project-first interface with SEO metadata, Open Graph output, JSON profile data, llm.txt, sitemap and robots routes, PDF assets, and gated reveal flows for sensitive links. The current migration work moves the site from a VM-hosted Docker deployment toward Cloudflare Pages so the same public URLs can run with less operational fragility.","techStack":["Software Development","Internal tooling"],"url":"https://scholtz.dpdns.org","liveUrl":"https://scholtz.dpdns.org","secondaryLiveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveLabel":null,"githubUrl":"https://github.com/scholtzap/personal-website","imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=341e495d-9bdc-81ea-8b0c-d6609657f765"},{"title":"Plentify: Climbing Wall","description":"Designed and delivered a 9 m by 2.44 m self-supporting steel-frame climbing wall for the Plentify warehouse. The project moved from concept and budgeting through fabrication, route setting, safety controls, certification, and employee access governance. It was completed under budget, which left room to buy shared climbing shoes, and the operating model requires signed indemnities, belay certification, mandatory climbing shoes, controlled access, and yearly structural inspection. The outcome was a durable staff-wellness asset with the safety process needed to keep it usable.","techStack":["Health & Safety","Budgeting","DIY","Mechanical Engineering","Project Management"],"url":null,"liveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveLabel":null,"githubUrl":null,"imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=33ee495d-9bdc-803c-95b3-c8351e18da2e"},{"title":"ChatGPT Export: local knowledge-base migration pipeline","description":"Built a local ChatGPT export and knowledge-base migration pipeline that turns conversation history into structured, publishable reference material. The Python workflow discovers workspaces and projects, resumes interrupted exports, writes full conversation JSON atomically, routes conversations into personal and work knowledge trees, synthesizes domain articles with Gemini/Vertex AI, splits long outputs into Notion-ready sub-pages, and supports publishing to Notion or Outline through configured integrations. Raw exports, generated knowledge bases, settings, and secrets stay local unless a publishing target is explicitly configured.","techStack":["Software Development","Internal tooling","AI Engineering","RAG"],"url":"https://github.com/scholtzap/chatgpt-export","liveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveLabel":null,"githubUrl":"https://github.com/scholtzap/chatgpt-export","imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=375e495d-9bdc-81b6-817c-cc332b128095"},{"title":"PDF Unlock: session-scoped PDF password removal API","description":"Built the backend foundation for a privacy-first PDF password removal service for users who already know their document passwords. The FastAPI service creates short-lived sessions, validates PDF uploads by size and file signature, tests user-provided password candidates with pikepdf, returns per-file success or failure, and serves unlocked PDFs from ephemeral storage. It is packaged for Cloud Run with IP and session rate limits, 30-minute cleanup, file and password caps, CORS controls, health checks, OpenAPI docs, Docker packaging, and integration tests using generated locked PDFs.","techStack":["Software Development","Internal tooling","Product Ownership"],"url":null,"liveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveLabel":null,"githubUrl":null,"imageUrl":"https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1450101499163-c8848c66ca85?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=85&fm=jpg&crop=entropy&cs=srgb"},{"title":"DriveStat: Google Drive storage treemap","description":"Built DriveStat, a Google Drive storage analyzer that turns Drive metadata into a WinDirStat-style dashboard. The Google Apps Script and Sheets workflow scans My Drive or visible shared drives in resumable batches, writes raw file metadata to Sheets, aggregates folder totals and hierarchy views, and builds dashboards for top folders, top files, file types, depth summaries, and stacked folder charts. It also serves an HTML Google Charts treemap, while staying read-only against Drive content and accounting for quota behavior around Google-native files.","techStack":["Software Development","Internal tooling","Operations"],"url":"https://github.com/scholtzap/drive-file-size","liveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveLabel":null,"githubUrl":"https://github.com/scholtzap/drive-file-size","imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=375e495d-9bdc-81b4-bef9-fb4ed79c4a9b"},{"title":"F1 in Schools: Model F1 Car","description":"Completed a solo F1 in Schools model-car project before formal engineering training, using it to self-teach SolidWorks, CAD iteration, and first-principles aerodynamic tradeoffs. The design centered on a whale-tail-inspired rear aerofoil for stability while prioritizing low-drag airflow over downforce-heavy alternatives. The final car combined a CNC-machined balsa body, printed rear wing, and lightweight low-friction wheels, making the project an early practical exercise in design constraints, manufacturing, testing, and engineering judgement.","techStack":["Mechanical Engineering","DIY"],"url":"https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2406578","liveUrl":"https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2406578","secondaryLiveUrl":null,"secondaryLiveLabel":null,"githubUrl":"https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2406578","imageUrl":"https://scholtz.dpdns.org/project-covers/f1-in-schools.svg"}],"commitActivity":{"totals":{"githubCommits":941,"gitlabCommits":187,"githubAdditions":2530570,"gitlabAdditions":1136416},"weeklyBuckets":39},"properties":[{"name":"Property24","platform":"Property24","url":"https://hiddingh-village.scholtz.dpdns.org","listingUrl":"https://www.property24.com/to-rent/oranjezicht/cape-town/western-cape/9155/116706669","fallbackUrl":"https://hiddingh-village.scholtz.dpdns.org","imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=33ee495d-9bdc-8086-9bc2-e46ad145148b","description":"Hiddingh Village is a restored Oranjezicht apartment presented as a long-term property and renovation project: a central Cape Town base with mountain access, city convenience, and a steadily upgraded interior. The public listing context is owner-facing rather than guest copy; it highlights the asset, neighbourhood, and improvement story without publishing private renovation costs or admin detail."},{"name":"AirBnB","platform":"AirBnB","url":"https://hiddingh-village.scholtz.dpdns.org","listingUrl":"https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1482336091469850809?guests=1&adults=1&s=67&unique_share_id=5b02a1cf-f52b-455b-bbdc-9f7efd659fce","fallbackUrl":"https://hiddingh-village.scholtz.dpdns.org","imageUrl":"/api/notion-cover?pageId=33ee495d-9bdc-8060-8476-d39e21cf23c2","description":"Guest-facing short-stay listing for Hiddingh Village in Oranjezicht: a comfortable Cape Town base near Table Mountain, Gardens, Kloof Street, and the city bowl. The copy helps visitors understand the stay experience - location, light, amenities, and practical access - while the dedicated property website remains the stable public link when marketplace adverts are paused or unlisted."}]}