While delivering his speech at the 82nd IMESA Awards, CESA President Neresh Pather cautioned that the lack of capacity at Municipal level should not only be a concern, but should be a warning that unless something drastic is done there could be dire consequences as we see service delivery protests and uprising at community level.

The results of the latest CESA Bi-annual Economic and Capacity Survey for the period January to June 2018 indicates positive news, that the construction sector has seen growth for the first time in six quarters. Confidence levels in the consulting sector deteriorated for the current quarter, reaching a record low - the least confident consulting engineers have ever been, based on the results of the surveys over the years since the mid-90’s.

In response to Minister Tito Mboweni’s Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) recently presented in Parliament, CESA welcomes Government’s focus on infrastructure development in support of economic recovery and job creation. CESA supports the development of an infrastructure fund in partnership with the private sector aimed at enhancing economic growth and improving governance.

In recognition of the changing landscape of business and the increasing need for diversification, more and more Consulting Engineering companies are finding themselves moving away from the traditional engineer-owned and managed business focusing on design and construction supervision and offering value adding services such as infrastructure advisory services and maintenance management services.

A lack of investment in the development of skills for consulting engineering human resources over many years has resulted in a skewed and unbalanced scenario in the industry. When a graph is plotted showing the number of engineers against the age of these engineers, the picture that emerges is a graph of two peaks with the older (close to retirement) engineers on one peak and young (recently graduated) engineers on the other with a trough of middle management between the two peaks.

National treasury Instruction No 4 of 2015/2016 issued in terms of the Public Finance Management Act of 1999 (PFMA), requires accounting officers and accounting authorities to implement the National Treasury Standard in planning, design, procurement or execution of infrastructure projects, and to develop a suitable supply chain management policy for infrastructure procurement and delivery management.

The annual CESA Golf Challenge was held on Friday the 19th October 2017 at the Randpark Golf Club and was once again a 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.

The Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) Road to Professional Registration was hosted by Aurecon at their Rosebank office on the 11th October 2018. The event was aimed at informing candidate engineers in the industry about the process of registering as a professional. The event included three speakers – two of whom are assessors with ECSA and a recently registered professional engineer.  Following detailed presentations about the registration process, the audience was given an opportunity to ask questions. The event was attended by about 40 YPs.

Knight Piésold, recently achieved Level 1 BBBEE accreditation through the training and development of local staff and shareholders as well as enterprise development and participation in meaningful CSI initiatives, the 97-year old firm is a proudly South African company that invests its profits locally.