Consulting Engineers South Africa (CESA) has set out to mobilise South Africans to transform the country under its 2019 theme: “Reshaping our future together” – “Doing what is right!”
In order to execute the theme, which was revealed by CESA President, Neresh Pather, this week, the association will focus on four key areas:- Delivering Purpose and Engagement – Establishing Trust
- Value for Money, Resilience and Sustainability
- Ownership and accountability through Activism, Volunteerism and Values
- Skills, capacity and competence
Delivering Purpose and Engagement – Establishing Trust
Under delivering purpose and engagement, Pather noted that there is a strong focus within CESA on working with and supporting Government, with increased collaboration with National Treasury on Procurement, the Auditor General’s office on compliance support, together with partnering agreements with Client Bodies like SANRAL, Transnet and COGTA allowing CESA to contribute positively in terms of support that includes capacity building, skills development, compliance and good governance. Pather said that during 2018 CESA was involved in detailed engagements to address the current challenges and the way forward with all of these organisations including entering into dialogue with the Parliamentary Appropriations Committee.Value for Money, Resilience and Sustainability
Pather highlighted the need for a strong focus on providing ‘value for money’ infrastructure adding that more focus needs to be placed on calculating the best possible infrastructure solution based on the total life cycle costing of the project and not on procuring the lowest cost design fees which make up only approximately 3% of the lifecycle cost of a project.“Sound planning and good feasibility studies incorporating innovative technology for the development of infrastructure is needed to drive economic prosperity and growth”.
Ownership and accountability through Activism, Volunteerism and Values
According to Pather the country is in need of active citizens who will take account of their own future without waiting for someone else to do this. “Implementation is key and CESA will be focused on assisting Clients to focus on delivery and action as opposed to just talking about it. Working together industry bodies can assist in driving specific mandates, clients can focus on driving project management and delivery teams need to focus on driving execution.”Skills, capacity and competence
Turning to skills, capacity and competence, Pather highlighted the need for industry bodies and key stakeholders to collaborate for collective benefit working with universities, learned institutions and research bodies to drive our education system but also training people sufficiently in both the private and public sectors to undertake the roles they are meant to play in delivering infrastructure.“The industry needs to address the issue of the importance of engineers as well as focus on creating the right narrative to be able to attract young engineers into the Built Environment and infrastructure space to make sure that sustainability and relevance is ensured,” he said.“The use of technology to speed up delivery and to properly satisfy demand will soon become a reality for all of us. We need to start future-proofing our teams and reinventing our service offering to embed technology going forward. All of these advances will be targeting faster design, more cost-effective solutions and more consistent delivery of infrastructure and construction projects from both a time and cost perspective, Pather concluded.
