The CESA Young Professionals Sustainability Imbizo is normally held as a single event which coincides with the CESA Aon Engineering Excellence Awards and the Business of Consulting Engineering (BCE) Graduation, with both events often held in August or September. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic guidelines implemented, this year’s event was held via a virtual platform as a series of webinars.

The 8th instalment provided a platform for young professionals to learn, debate and engage around the following topics:

• Future leaders
• Building Primary relationships
• Professional relationship and environment
• Management, ethics, and politics in the engineering ecosystem

The first event was held on the 29th September and was moderated by Yankho Banda, National Chair of the CESA YPF and Traffic & Transport Engineer at AM Consulting Engineers. Speakers included: Hannelie Mulder, Technical Specialist for Estate Planning at PPS Insurance discussing estate planning; Renee Petersen, CESA YPF Deputy Chairperson and Civil Engineering Technologist at SMEC South Africa talking about today and tomorrow’s leaders; and CESA President Sugen Pillay discussing future leaders in the consulting engineering industry.

On the 16th October, the second CESA Young Professionals Sustainability Imbizo event was held with more speakers sharing valuable insights. This session was moderated by Andi Rweqane from Royal HaskoningDHV. Speakers included John Homewood, an integrative spiritual life and consciousness coach discussing building relationships; and Tshilidzi Ramanyimi, Head of the Construction and Maintenance Division at the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) talking about building professional relationships.

More speakers were invited for the CESA Young Professionals Sustainability Imbizo held on the 6th November. This time around, the event was moderated by Senior Civil Engineer at ROMH Consulting, Kholwani Dube. Speakers included: Andy Mizen, Senior Risk Consultant at Aon South Africa providing a look at environmental risks; Dr Lloyd Fisher-Jeffes, Professional Engineer at Zutari providing insight on droughts, floods, climate change and why we need to develop stronger professional relationships; Zeenat Ghoor, Chief Executive Officer at Aspire Consulting discussing corporate relationships in the future; and Nazeer Jamal, Managing Director and Lead Environmental Specialist at Khweza Environmental Solutions talking about the impact of engineering on the environment.

Webinar recordings are available on CE-TV