At the 64th Annual General Meeting held at the CESA Seminar in Johannesburg on Tuesday 7th November, Neresh Pather from Mott MacDonald Africa was inaugurated as President of the organisation for the next two years, succeeding Lynne Pretorius. Sugen Pillay, Managing Director of Zitholele Consulting was elected to serve as Deputy President of CESA for the same period.

The 2017 CESA Seminar and AGM which was held on the 7th November 2017 at the Southern Sun Hotel OR Tambo Airport was a resounding success. The Seminar comprised of two sessions dealing with ‘The funding and delivery of Infrastructure in times of political uncertainty’, and ‘The Transformation of the Consulting Engineering Sector’. The calibre of the speakers was excellent and the sessions were thought-provoking and interactive allowing for heated debate on a number of crucial industry-related topics.

The CESA Women’s Forum was successfully launched in October at a function held in Midrand, that was sponsored by Aon and Knight Piésold. The first Women’s Forum was held in November, hosted at Matleng Energy Solution’s offices in Woodmead. The objective of the Forum is to provide women in the consulting engineering industry with structured support.

The Construction Charter aka the ‘Construction Sector Code of Good Practice’ has finally been gazetted so it is now in force.

If you are serious about a career in consulting engineering then you should enrol for the CESA Business of Consulting Engineering (BCE) development programme. Likewise if you are an employer of consulting engineers, you should be sending key staff members on the programme. Better still, consider attending yourself!

The results of CESA’s Bi-annual Economic and Capacity Survey for the period January to June 2017 indicates that there has been some improvement in the industry with the net satisfaction rate increasing to 96.3% in the June 2017 survey, from 87.5% in the last six months of 2016.

Article published courtesy of Transform SA. Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan recently stated that “Public procurement will amount to about R1,5 trillion over the next three years. Let me say that a little differently. We will pay about R500 billion a year for the delivery of goods and service.” This declaration by Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan when delivering the country’s   budget 2017 bears testimony to government’s inclination towards developing local industries, broadening economic participation and creating jobs.  On the flip side, they shine a spotlight on the big elephant in the room regarding the laws and regulations aimed at facilitating economic freedom for the black majority in a transformed economy.

The consulting engineering industry represented by FIDIC, the International Federation of Consulting Engineers, has confirmed this statement of operational and monitoring commitments to help achieve the objectives of the agreement that was entered into by the Conference of the Parties (COP) at its 21st Session in November 2016 in Paris.

Article published courtesy of Financial Mail. New technologies, especially robotics and artificial intelligence, are advancing faster than an average CEO can keep track. So, does this hold promise for SA’s future workers, or jobless despair?

The annual CESA Presidential Golf Challenge was held on Friday the 13th October 2017 at the Johannesburg County Club and was once again a huge success. Thank you to all the member firms, affiliates, sponsors and stakeholders that participated in helping achieve yet another successful Golf Challenge. The aim of the golf day is to provide a platform for our members and industry stakeholders to network and develop business relationships.