From cast iron to cutting-edge solutions

No-one wanted to take on the job of welding three antique cast-iron pieces to create a sculpture outside Cape Town’s Silo Hotel — until Janet Cotton’s company, One Eighty Engineering Solutions, stepped in.

Using forensic root cause failure analysis, One Eighty has also uncovered what made vodka in a pink watermelon cocktail change colour (a chemical reaction with the bottle lining); what caused a storage tank to collapse, spilling 50,000l of red wine (poor welding); and what led to a catastrophic fishing vessel engine failure (a sequence of eight events).

Cotton’s lifelong habit of probing complex problems has driven her success.

As a child, her constant questions about how things worked may have tested others’ patience, but they also shaped her path. Curious and determined to solve real-world issues, she studied engineering and launched One Eighty in 2002 at just 28 years old. “I was never the person who would not succeed,” she says.

Cotton grew up in Constantia, Cape Town, where her father owned a nursery. After matriculating at Wynberg Girls’ High School, studying engineering at the University of Cape Town was a natural fit. “I’ve always loved all things technical,” she says. “I was the only one in the house who could programme the VCR. I saved up for a microscope and had a chemistry set.”

She started sailing Optimist dinghies at age five on Zeekoevlei. Drawn to both the thrill and the technicality of the sport, she moved on to sea sailing and earned her coastal skipper’s licence at 16. “Sailing teaches you a lot. It’s very technical — about systems and strategy. You need to understand the winches, cleats, ropes, knots. It was all so exciting.”

Cotton recalls driving her father “a bit mad” with questions about engines, winches and propellers — questions he couldn’t always answer.

An aptitude test in grade 7 confirmed engineering as a top career match. Upon hearing her science and maths scores (between 90% and 100%), the (male) assessor earnestly said: “That’s good, because not only will you be good with a typewriter, you’ll be able to fix it too.” Cotton laughs: “Good thing I didn’t pursue fixing typewriters — I’d be obsolete!”

She excelled in accounting, maths and science at school, but her father was sceptical about a university education. “He thought it was for people who went off to study something and then did eccentric things.”   She convinced him with her accounting marks (about 95%) to let her study business science but ultimately chose materials engineering.

“You could look at materials under a microscope and a whole new universe would open up — like a different realm.”

She describes her varsity years as some of the best of her life. Her master’s degree was upgraded to a PhD in 2000, which focused on a novel high nitrogen stainless steel being developed by Columbus Stainless, Africa’s only producer of stainless steel flat products. The alloy was discontinued during the last stages of her thesis write-up because of a change in ownership. “I tried very hard not to take it personally.”

Cotton stayed in academia for two more years as a postdoctorate fellow, researching hot rolling schedule optimisation for companies such as Columbus, Mittal and Hulett.  (The process involves planning and organising how metal slabs or coils are passed through a hot rolling mill to produce finished metal products.) But she soon realised she wanted to solve practical industry problems. In 2002, she launched One Eighty Engineering Solutions.

Today her company tackles complex challenges in industries including oil and gas, mining, marine, food and beverage, and power generation. It is now regarded as the most widely scoped ISO internationally accredited materials testing lab in Africa.

Cotton is passionate about raising awareness of materials and metallurgical engineering and how it can assist manufacturers to identify optimal processes and fit-for-purpose materials. One Eighty recently hosted Africa’s first root cause analysis conference, bringing together engineers, underwriters, asset owners, asset care managers and lawyers to discuss how to prevent failures — and their financial consequences.

“If we can examine the failures, maybe we can think about how to prevent them. Nobody cares about prevention until it happens to them,” she says.

A second conference is planned for 2026.

Cotton describes the business environment as “tough”. She has experienced some hard knocks along the way including attempts to bribe her and sabotage her company. “I refused point-blank to engage with that rubbish,” she says. 

But she concludes wryly: “I think these things are all fairly normal in business.”

When not solving engineering puzzles and building her business, Cotton still enjoys getting out on the ocean “to clear my head with wind and sea”.