The CESA Youth Best Practice Webinar: Leadership and Management hosted during June was aimed specifically at closing skills gaps in the engineering environment through empowering our youth. Eng. Yankho Banda, CESA Young Professionals Forum (YPF) National Chair and Transport Engineer at AM Consulting Engineers provided the opening remarks in which she encouraged young professionals working in either member firms or non-member firms to join the YPF, stating, “The YPF is open to young professionals under the age of 36 years, both in the private and public sector.”.

Joining in as host for the event was Avuyile Mayekiso, Chair of the CESA YPF Border Branch and Engineering Technician at ROMH Consulting. Explaining the purpose of the session, Myekiso stated that the underlying reason for these leadership webinars is the philosophy that the sharing of unique experiences by senior consulting engineers will result in more informed young professionals who will make informed choices, either to grow within the firm of their employment or to start their own consulting engineering firm.

Avuyile then introduced Guest Speaker, Dr Ron Watermeyer, Director and Founder of Infrastructure Options who discussed his professional journey in Engineering, Procurement and Advisory. “I am here to talk about my unique experience in the ‘Business of Engineering’ with the aim of educating our young professionals on how they can expand their engineering specialty beyond conventional engineering,” stated Dr Watermeyer.

One of the most important statements from Dr Watermeyer during his presentation was that you cannot buy infrastructure in the same way that you procure pens and paper, “We have to demonstrate that we are not buying infrastructure for the sake of buying infrastructure”. This important statement aligns with one of CESA’s key messages on infrastructure procurement focused on quality-based selection providing value for money solutions to our country’s infrastructure requirements.

The full recording is available on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr7E5g2WNdc