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CEOs Report

Joining Hands,

We Can Move

South Africa Forward

LEFADI MAKIBINYANE
CESA CEO

uring the year under review the business of such as procurement, which has had a negative
CESA as the Voice of Consulting Engineering impact on our members plying their trade. I continue
Dcontinued to reverberate across the Nation. to encourage our member firms to be on the lookout
More and more people in South Africa increasingly for the opportunity that the New Age Business
became sensitized to the importance of the work of Briefings, televised on SABC 2’s Morning Live Show
consulting engineers and their positive impact on the from 06:30-09:00 provides. During the past year we
economy and the quality of lives of the communities used them to bring our concerns to the attention
they served. of Government Ministers, which provided us an
opportunity to educate our clients about our industry.
CESA continued to accelerate its endeavours to be
the voice of reason and opened up new avenues Owing to my Board membership of other Public
and platforms to engage Government in order to Sector Statutory Bodies, I continued to educate and
articulate our member firms’ frustration regarding the influence the market in favour of CESA member
manner in which consulting engineering services are firms. In one meeting earlier this year, attended under
procured. the auspices of Rand Water, I met with the Minister
of Water Affairs Edna Molewa. Of interest for CESA
During the year we were bold enough to challenge
was the DWA Plan to import foreign engineers from
and change the status quo in order to ensure that
Cuba and possibly Japan for the water sector.
CESA was positioned to respond to current and Through these interactions with the Minister a
CESA Annual Review 2013 / 2014 There was also a need for CESA to ensure that our I presented the case that CESA is of the view that
future challenges. Ongoing strategic review was an
important part of this process.
meeting was facilitated with the DDG: Water
Resource Infrastructure Projects, Ms Zandile Mathe.
strategy was informed by, aligned with and supported
South Africa has the much needed scarce skills
the National Development Plan (NDP) and National
but that they are not sufficiently utilised because
Infrastructure Plan (NIP) priorities.
we are waiting for projects to come on stream from
many sectors of Government in line with National
The New Age Business Briefings proved to be a
Infrastructure Plan.
valuable platform to engage our clients as we began

6 to deal with the challenges bedevilling our industry Ms Mathe also raised her concerns that the