We are honoured to have been crowned winners in the Strategic Programme category at the 2021 FIDIC Member Association Excellence Awards for our ‘Protecting Lives and Livelihoods’ campaign. We would like to thank everyone involved in making this campaign such an incredible success. Once again South Africa is punching way above our weight against the many countries that are members of the International Federation of Consulting Engineers from across the world. FIDIC currently has 102 Member Associations which represent over one million engineering professionals and 40,000 firms globally.

Protecting Lives and Livelihoods Campaign

John Browne, the chairman of L1 Energy and CEO of BP: “Engineers have saved far more lives than all of the doctors in the world.” 

The role that engineers and specifically Consulting Engineers play in Protecting the Lives and Livelihoods is often hidden and not fully understood by Clients and Stakeholders but more so by the General Public. The campaign was undertaken to educate these target markets as to what a Consulting Engineers is and the value they bring to society.

In view of the current depressed state of the South African economy, even pre-Covid, and the impact that the development of value-for-money infrastructure can make on the upliftment of communities and improvement in service delivery, CESA decided to undertake a major 3-year PR campaign to raise the profile of the industry and the positive impact it has in underpinning economic growth and development.

Known as the ‘silent profession’ Consulting Engineers are the drivers of economic growth through the design and development of infrastructure aimed at improving service delivery and in turn contribute to uplifting communities, alleviating poverty and unemployment in line with the aims of the South African Government’s National Development Plan (NDP) aligned to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

When doing the research for this campaign we looked at the information that was available about consulting engineers, what they do and how to become one. What we found was that most of the FIDIC member organisations across the world are very good at providing information on the benefits of membership and benefits to clients but there was no information on what a consulting engineer is, how to become one, the difference between a consulting engineer and an engineer in either construction or manufacturing or what they do, that was easy to understand and to access.

For the animation series we tell the story through the eyes of a little girl fascinated by the world around her, and her world-wise and knowledgeable grandfather.
We chose the little girl because a child can ask questions without fear of looking foolish, but also because we wanted the public and all young girls to know that they too can become, not only engineers, but consulting engineers.

Communication was developed to drive traffic to the CESA Website campaign landing page where information was housed to further educate the reader:

During 2019/2020 CESA Membership had been declining from previously reported 580 member firms down to 550 on the back of an ailing economy and subscription defaulters. Concurrently though as a result of the campaign, these number have dramatically increased to almost 600 member firms by June 2021 – an incredible achievement!

In order to bring the campaign alive, it has been integrated into all CESA activities including the CESA Aon Engineering Excellence Awards.  Acknowledgment of the contribution members make in saving lives through projects also celebrated, with no disregard to others affected by an ailing economy and industry closures over the period of the pandemic, the focus of the awards was on the livelihoods that had been sustained in the process of planning, designing and delivering infrastructure projects.