Consulting Engineers South Africa (CESA) will this year place a greater emphasis on transforming its membership and the industry as a whole.

Although significant strides have been made by government to transform society, CESA President Lynne Pretorius says South Africa is still facing many obstacles more than 20 years after democracy.

The organisation has therefore identified transformation as a critical theme which will be taken up and driven by CESA’s Transformation Committee, which includes members from both established and emerging firms.

The committee will promote transformation as an ethical business practice and monitor progress made by its members beyond the requirements of the Construction Sector Scorecard.

In addition, it will help members understand that transformation is an ongoing process, facilitate sustainable BBBEE practices within the industry, and promote the practice through member’s professional and business activities.

Pretorius noted that this intervention is essential considering that levels of black ownership are low across the industry.

“An overall assessment of employment by race indicates that the percentage of black employment has varied between 40% and 50% since 2007. There has also been no notable increase in black staff within CESA membership over the past four years,” she said.

Of the 533 firms on CESA’s current database, only 122 firms are black-owned, with this ownership greater than 51%.

Women in the minority

The industry also has a long way to go to beak the glass ceiling experienced by women. The number of woman engineering staff employed by CESA members is only 4% to 6% of total consulting engineering professionals, and black women make up just 12% of this group.

Problems at school level

Transformation of the consulting engineering profession is also being hindered by the limited number of learners competent in science and mathematics leaving the school system. This is particularly concerning when one considers that the industry has to compete with other sectors to attract talent from this small pool to engineering programmes.

Poor credibility

Pretorius says the status quo has been extremely damaging to the profession, with these unconvincing statistics further eroding the credibility of the sector.

“Typical statements made in the country refer to ‘engineers being old white males’ and that ‘consulting engineering firms are only interested in making money’,” noted Pretorius.

Sustainable professional development

CESA’s interventions to drive real and sustainable transformation will include developing a pipeline of engineering professionals over the long-term by identifying and then supporting learners with a technical aptitude at secondary school level.

It will also consolidate efforts to create and implement a process for supporting tertiary engineering students and mentor graduate engineering staff in the workplace to develop their skills and competencies required for professional registration.

Meanwhile, the association has identified a host of potential support programmes for small, medium and micro enterprises, which constitute about 95% of CESA’s existing membership. Of this grouping, only 24% are black-owned with black ownership greater than 51%.

Pretorius said CESA is also offering to partner with government departments to second young engineering staff in the public sector to member firms where they will gain critical experience.

Furthermore, the organisation will develop awareness programmes to combat the barrier faced by women in the industry in order to attain a win-win situation for both employers and employees in our sector.

Importantly, the thorough detailing of BBBEE in annual declarations of members firms submitted to CESA will bolster this transformation agenda, as it will, for the first time, allow accurate measurement and monitoring of transformation in the industry, rather than being reliant on BBBEE scorecards.

Pretorius said that although CESA does not have all the answers, it aims to set the building blocks in place that will enable a sound sustainable growth and transformation of the profession and the consulting engineering sector.

“Watch this space,” said Pretorius.