Prominent South African businessman Saki Macozoma and ‘A Hill of Fools’ author and medical practitioner Dr Mtutuzeli Nyoka will be addressing the 2nd Annual Young Professionals (YPs) Sustainability Imbizo to be held on 11and 12 August.
The Sustainability Imbizo is the brain child of Consulting Engineers South Africa’s (CESA) YPs aimed at empowering young professionals with the best leadership experience embracing general aspects of leadership, community activism and engineering professionalism. The Imbizo provides a unique and dynamic platform for built environment and engineering young professionals in the public and private sectors to discuss pertinent issues relating to all aspects of delivery and maintenance of infrastructure and engineering projects. It also seeks to establish and maintain structures for YPs to become role-models for school learners as well as providing coaching and mentoring opportunities for YPs from senior infrastructure professionals. It provides a platform for young professionals to discuss and propose sustainable solutions to skills development and retention of professionals by both the public and private sectors. Macozoma will discuss how business influences politics as well as the art of mastering the business of politics while Dr Nyoka will explore the scourge of corruption, greed and power. CESA President Abe Thela will provide a motivational talk to young professionals, while CESA’s supply chain management chairperson Arthur Taute will deliver a presentation entitled: ‘If you are not at the table, you might be on the menu’. FIDIC Managing Director, Enrico Vink, will talk on global lobbying and Royal HaskoningDHV CEO Nyami Mandindi will discuss how to influence clients.“YPs need a fair amount of time to be groomed and nurtured as engineers, and gain the necessary experience and be supported through this process by their companies,” explains CESA YP Chairperson Likhaya Nkonki.
He argues that there are certain aspects that can be fast-tracked when it comes to training graduates but experience can never be fast-tracked. If a person with ten years’ experience is required for a particular task, companies must not expect graduates to fulfill that role after three years of experience. “Greater emphasis must be placed on mentoring and training of graduates; a more structured way needs to be put together by the Engineering Council of South Africa, with the help of industry…. Employers need to be compelled to put engineering graduates through a structured training programme before they can be registered as professionals.” Nkonki adds that government has a major role to play in ensuring a sustainable future for the country by investing more money into training of engineers, not only at tertiary level, but also pre-tertiary and post-graduate. “Any client that deals with engineering work must be compelled to have professionally registered engineers in their ranks to ensure proper planning and coordination of work, including ensuring that there is a budget in place to execute the work well in advance,” concludes Nkonki.
