Overview

A well-known professional engineer encapsulated this thought - "Do you want to be an engineer who happens to be a businessman, or do you want to be a businessman who happens to be an engineer?” This is an important key to UNDERSTANDING the principles of finance in the engineering world.

This course will enable you to integrate financial best practices with the powerful functionality of Excel, to effectively build, use and interpret predictive financial models in preparing budgets, projections, business evaluations and cash flows. Enabling the individual to strategically plan or react quickly and efficiently to changes that happen in the real-life situations.

Engineers, technical staff, and others in the built environment professions will be empowered with the language and the practice of finance in the engineering sector. It will enhance your knowledge and understanding of the legal environment around you and your fiduciary duties in terms of your relative positions within an organisation.

Why Should an Individual Attend?

• Bridge engineering and finance: Gain the unique ability to combine technical expertise with financial acumen, elevating your career beyond the ordinary.
• Master predictive financial models: Use Excel to build, interpret, and apply models for budgets, projections, and cash flows.
• React strategically to change: Develop the agility to plan ahead or respond quickly to real‑world business shifts.
• Speak the language of finance: Empower yourself with financial terminology and practices tailored to the engineering sector.
• Understand legal and fiduciary duties: Strengthen your awareness of governance, compliance, and your responsibilities within an organisation.
• Enhance business resilience: Learn how finance impacts your firm’s survival and competitiveness in today’s economy.
• Gain confidence in non-financial roles: Build the skills and assurance to navigate financial landscapes even if you’re not a finance specialist.

Outcomes

By the end of the course, delegates will be able to:

• Unlock business performance: Evaluate profit, ROI, and risk–reward analysis to drive smarter decisions in South African contexts.
• Navigate governance confidently: Master business entities, the Companies Act, and King Reports I–IV.
• Build tax & accounting mastery: Grasp key principles, transactions, and the accounting equation with ease.
• Simplify bookkeeping processes: Apply journals, T accounts, EASEL, source documentation, and trial balances effectively.
• Produce powerful financial reports: Create and interpret income statements, balance sheets, and compliance‑aligned reports.
• Lead financial operations: Confidently manage accounts receivable/payable and analyze data for sharper decision‑making.

Program Outline

DAY ONE

• Basic concepts of what profit is, mark-up and margins
• Principles of risk and return. The different types of financial investments, risks associated, and expected rewards
• Basic Tax:
  
  • Individual, Company, VAT, STC; Capital Gains
• Forms of Business Ownership and Organisations
• Understanding the Language of Accounting
• Accounting Process
  
  • Transactions
  • Accounts
  • Double entry
  • Trial Balance
• How the above concept’s produce the end-product of financial statements, in the form of:
  
  • Balance Sheets
  • Income Statements
  • Statement of changes in equity
  • Cash Flow Statement
• Understanding of the above financial Statements
• A Case Study of an Engineering Firm (using actual accounts and postings)

The above content covers such aspects as WIP, time sheets, the importance of managing WIP and billing it, ASAP. The different software packages available for engineering companies, as well as, the way WIP should be handled in the financials of the company. The concept of IFRS in engineering companies and how they should respond. The importance of cash flow in an engineering company, and how this should be managed

• Financial Analysis, Ratios, and principles behind ratio analysis:
  
  • Profitability ratios
  • Liquidity Ratios
  • Efficiency Ratios (Debtors, WIP and cash management, the effects of poor debtors’ turnover on cash and profitability)
  • Gearing Ratios
  • Market Ratios
• How does the above merge together in the Du Pont cascade, to give the “Magic Formula”

DAY TWO

• Continuation of Ratio Analysis
• Introduction to Budgeting and Profit Planning
• How will the business acquire finance and allocate the required resources to achieve profit expectations of the owners?
  
  • Capital Budgeting: - covering such aspects as:
  • Time Value of Money
  • Future Value
  • Present Value
  • Present and future values of annuities
  • NPV, IRR, Payback
• How the above concepts are employed in a business to ensure cost effective capacity planning
• How to evaluate your business, different valuation models to assess the worth of an Engineering Firm.
  
  • Asset Valuation
  • Restated Asset Valuation (Fair Value)
  • Constant Growth Model
  • Discounted Cash Flow,
  • Principles of WACC
  • Using WACC as the discount rate

Basic Costing Principles: Covering the ECSA guidelines and how to calculate overhead factors, and how the costing of direct as well as indirect cost is apportioned

Who Should Attend?

• Engineers
• Architects
• Project / Construction Managers
• Quantity Surveyors
• Construction Health & Safety
• Contractors / Sub Contractors
• Executives / Senior Management
• Middle Management