From 14 to 16 October, Bloemfontein will be the setting for a conversation that reaches well beyond any single industry: how South Africa invests in infrastructure, develops the skills to deliver it, and ensures it produces lasting value for the economy and for communities.
The city will host the 16th SACQSP International Research Conference at Imvelo Safari Lodge, bringing together government, industry, academia and international expertise at a time when South Africa is having to rethink how infrastructure investment translates into growth, jobs, resilience and long-term public value.
Hosted by the South African Council for the Quantity Surveying Profession (SACQSP) in partnership with the Central University of Technology, Free State (CUT), and supported through collaboration with the International Cost Engineering Council (ICEC), the conference carries the theme, ‘Reimagining quantity surveying: digital innovation, climate resilience, and social impact in a VUCA world’.Its questions extend well beyond the profession: how better infrastructure delivery supports inclusive growth, whether South Africa has the professional capacity to meet its infrastructure ambitions, how AI is reshaping delivery and professional services, and what it will take to build infrastructure fit for a changing climate.
“These are not internal professional questions – they are national ones,” says SACQSP President Arthur Quphe. “How we plan, cost and deliver infrastructure determines whether growth reaches communities at all. Bringing government, industry, academia and international expertise into the same room in Bloemfontein is how we start closing the gap between ambition and delivery.”
Numerous research and industry papers will be presented over the three days, forming the evidence base for the discussions and connecting current research directly to the challenges facing the profession and the built environment more broadly. The Premier of the Free State, MaQueen Letsoha-Mathae, is expected to open the conference, bringing a policy perspective to proceedings.
Four keynote addresses will anchor the programme.
- Kofi Obeng-Ayirebi, Global Chair-elect of ICEC and incoming Global Chair from November 2026, delivers the sustainability keynote.
- Economist and University of the Free State Chancellor Professor Bonang Mohale addresses the economics of infrastructure delivery.
- Tshidi Mndzebele, founder and CEO of Avenir Holdings, speaks about ‘From technical professional to enterprise builder: reimagining the built environment professional of the future’.
- Dr Roze Phillips, futurist and CEO of Abundance At Work, invites us to see the future not as a destination we inherit, but as something we construct and to ask whether we are measuring what truly matters as we build it.
