Ernst Marais, a professional civil engineer with a Master’s degree in management, started Ernst Marais & Associates in 1982.

 In 2000, Rob Salzer joined Ernst, and they formed EMWIN System (Pty) Ltd

The primary focus of EMWIN is to develop and implement MS-Access based solutions for the small to medium sized construction enterprises at a single location.

E J Marais (Pty) Ltd's  development team is headed by Ernst J Marais. Prior to starting with EJM’s development, he worked for 10 years at a major software house where he gained valuable experience in the Visual Basic, and since its inception, the .Net environment. He contributed to two programming books about .NET Enterprise solutions.

The primary focus of EJM is to develop and implement solutions to the medium and large construction enterprises that can be geographically dispersed.

Ernst is ably assisted by Lana Marais (business analyst), Wikus Hattingh (senior programmer), Alida Marais (marketing and training) and Richard Mauwe (programmer).

Rob Salzer started in "Computing in Construction" in 1982 with HKC Systems. Rob became their Sales Director, and in May 1990, branched out on his own to become an Agent of HKC, responsible for over 85% of HKC's sales. In November 2000, HKC was bought out and closed down. Rob then approached Ernst Marais of Ernst Marais & Associates, a competitor of HKC Systems. As a result, EMWIN Systems (PTY) Ltd was formed and Rob took over the role of Sales and Marketing. He grew the userbase substantially and contributed immensly to the EMWIN System. Rob passed away on the 30th November 2008 after a long illness. He is sorely missed by his family, friends and colleagues.