Page 4 - index

Presidents Report

t has been an absolute pleasure to serve CESA as President for the past two years! I enjoyed every
moment of it. The period has been characterised by a drop off in the workload of our members and at
Ithe same time we witnessed the unfortunate findings of the Competition Commission that some of our
major contractors have colluded on major projects resulting in large fines imposed on these contractors. This
tarnished the name of our industry as a whole. I am proud to say that the consulting engineering industry has
not been party to this collusive behaviour and the awareness brought about by our theme in 2012 of “CESA
Engineers Unquestionably Ethical” followed by the 2013 theme of “Sustainability is Everyone’s Business” has
paid off, .. if you excuse the pun!

Indeed we have made our Business Integrity Management System (BIMS) part of our Code of Conduct and
hence a condition of membership of CESA. We will also launch at this year’s AGM in November our Sustainability
Framework as part of our Code of Conduct and also consequently a condition of CESA membership. CESA
is proud that the aforementioned two conditions of membership, together with the erstwhile requirement of
having a quality management system in place puts CESA and its member firms at the forefront of best practice
in the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC) family.

Our active participation in industry issues at various forums has given us the credibility to be invited to attend
and influence decision making on issues which concern our industry. We value the relationship we have with
PRASA, together with SABTACO in assisting the Project Management office in PRASA and on delivering on
the SIP7 (Strategic Infrastructure Project related to institutional strengthening of the 12 biggest municipalities
and PRASA).

We dissected the very wide spectrum of sustainability
issues into bite-sized portions that we need to prioritise
in South Africa and actively work on. These include
education, political and economic certainty, job creation,
eradication of corruption, and responsible development.
As consulting engineers we are at the forefront of
responsible development. We shifted the theme of
eradication of corruption from mere documents and
policy statements on this subject, to questioning the
personal integrity of people in senior leadership roles, in
CESA Annual Review 2012 / 2013 Naren Bhojaram should not be allowed to lead in any capacity if your
the private as well as the public sector. We concluded
that no matter how high your potential to be leader is
from the conventional metrics of IQ, EQ and PhQ, you

ethical balance is low.
I am pleased that we have succeeded in recruiting a new
CEO in the name of Lefadi Makibinyane who shares the
CESA ethos of doing clean business. I am sure that he,
Royal HaskoningDHV

4 CESA President