COLLABORATING for change

As a leading industry stakeholder, Consulting Engineers South Africa (CESA) is mandated to lobby for positive shifts within the regulatory environment to enable its members to better serve society. This is the key driver for Olu Soluade, president of CESA, whose theme for 2023 is ‘Make a Difference by Collaborating for Change.’

To make this possible in South Africa, however, there are pressing societal issues that must be tackled. A number of these were raised during the 2022 CESA Infrastructure Indaba, where the Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana, said, “Our problem is not funding, it is also not skills; the problem is corruption and crime. Corruption and crime, together with supply chain issues, are the primary limiting factors affecting the delivery of sustainable social and economic infrastructure in our country.”

Adding his viewpoint, Soluade strongly believes, “What our country is currently experiencing is the result of years of inadequate supply chain and procurement management focused on least-cost procurement! CESA believes that the correct approach should be to include the total cost of life-cycle ownership when procuring infrastructure – cheap simply does not last and puts lives at stake!”

Through industry collaboration, CESA was involved in the compilation of the new Public Procurement Bill, which is due to go before Parliament in the near future for sign-off and thereafter promulgation. This bill promises to ensure that the procurement of infrastructure is treated differently from that of general goods and services.

Grassroots development and skills challenge

Soluade says one of the key issues is the critical need for adequate and competent engineering capacity within government. “We need to consider how best to address this challenge in the short, medium and long term,” he continues.

“In the short term, the partnership with the private sector is the easiest to implement. In the medium term, we need to upscale and upskill the capacity in the public sector in line with the Framework for Professionalising the State pronounced on by President Ramaphosa in 2022, so that these individuals would become the future custodians of our public infrastructure, having been mentored by those who would then have fully retired.

“In the long term, an issue that is not receiving the attention required is the development of our skills pipeline, which needs to start at grassroots level – it is a long-term objective that, as a country, we need to address. Early childhood development (ECD) and basic education [are] the gateway to STEM careers, sustainably and systemically enabling the development of homegrown engineering skills for a transformed society and a transformed industry,” states Soluade.

CESA is calling on government to strengthen ECD and basic education programmes with a strong focus on the teaching and learning of pure mathematics and science at basic education levels and boosting career guidance to promote engineering studies as a career of choice at tertiary level.

Critical moment in South Africa’s timeline

“We are at a critical time in South Africa’s history where we find ourselves at a crossroads as a nation. There is an urgent need to start putting plans into action as we work together by collaborating to deliver a sustainable future for all,” adds Soluade.

“Our current water and energy challenges are stretching our resilience to the maximum. In addition, we face added challenges with our transport systems affecting logistics, our healthcare systems and our educational institutions, to name a few,” Soluade concludes.