As we come to the end of yet another year, I would like to wish you well over the holiday period and hope that you get some time to rest in preparation for what looks like it will be a bumper year for the built environment. If you are traveling, please go safely.

This year has required continued resilience from all sectors of South Africa in an ever-changing business landscape. Despite the challenges, we have been privy to many success stories – not just our members – but South Africans from all walks of life, who are pushing the boundaries through perseverance and innovation to overcome adversity.

One cannot help but continue to be optimistic about the future and hope that the past will become but a distant memory against which we will take lessons learnt to improve the future. As the proudly South African apex industry association of consulting engineering companies that this past year celebrated 70 years of being in existence, our members have experienced all the turbulence that accompanies periods of economic decline, change during transitions in our political landscape that directly affects infrastructure investment and economic growth. Our economy continues to grow at a less than glacial pace. The road to recovery is not going to be quick and immediate but as an industry we remain committed to advise, support and assist decision makers responsible for infrastructure development and delivery where we share a common positive vision for the future of our beloved Country.

In our direct efforts towards advocacy, we have placed a large focus on the private sector noting in our recent Bi-Annual Economics and Capacity surveys that the client workload is split equally between public and private sector clients.

Further recognition of the value that we add as a sector, is our involvement in Business Unity South Africa (BUSA) where I had the opportunity to be part of the NEDLAC negotiating team on the new Public Procurement Bill, which will likely be promulgated in 2023. The Framework for Professionalising the State, in which we were instrumental in giving input, was released this year and already government has started reviewing the appointment of senior managers who lack the requisite qualifications and experience to perform the roles for which they had been inappropriately appointed.

On the international front, CESA remains among the top ten members of FIDIC out of 106 member countries. Closer to home, we continued in our role as the secretariat for FIDIC Africa. The recognition of CESA both locally and globally is such that we play a pivotal role in many industry related organisations, where for example we remain active in the Construction Alliance South Africa (CASA) management committee, engaged directly with the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) on the Construction Industry Recovery Plan as well as participated in regular engagements with Infrastructure South Africa (ISA). We continue to play significant roles in collaborations both within the engineering profession, through the South African Forum of Engineering (SAFE) as well as across the built environment professions through the Built Environment Professions of South Africa (BEPSA).

The celebration of our 70th anniversary this year was a significant milestone and there is no doubt that we will continue to play the important role of being your partner in enabling consulting engineering excellence, for many more years to come. Our offices will be closing on the 23rd of December and re-opening on the 4th of January. If you are traveling, go safely. From all at CESA we wish you well over the festive season!