South Africa has to create sustainable and globally competitive industries if it is to create sustainable transformation from the legacy of apartheid. However, this can only be done by returning to the basics of growing, mining, manufacturing and building wealth, said South African consulting engineering firm Knight Piésold MD Leon Furstenburg at the company’s ninetieth anniversary ceremony, in Melrose, Gauteng.

“While we have many things to deal with, in South Africa, the key problem is still one of poverty. Unless we can find a sustainable solution to poverty, things are going to be difficult and volatile.”

Wealth, he argued, will not be created through service industries, but by delivering the infrastructure needed to support the sustainable development of industries in South Africa.

“There is undoubtedly a political understanding of what the country needs and the need for reconstruction and the need for creating the industry. However, it is often difficult to know how to achieve these targets,” he said.

In South Africa, the debate for years has been around the fact that the country has one of the lowest per capita ratios of engineers in the world. The debate has lacked conclusion as a result of slower-than-required industrial develop- ment, infrastructure development and the lack of understanding of the key role engineers play in stimulating growth.

The company reports that, even internationally, there is an increasingly widely held view that engineering skills are a commodity that can be bought at the best price.

“Expectations vary throughout the world of what you are supposed to do and what is accepted locally. But one must get past that and we have to look at ways of being competitive.

“To this day of tendering and bidding and fighting for work and lowest prices, 60% to 70% of our work is repeat business from known clients. I think this is something that we have to get the hang of in South Africa . . . in the pursuit of excellence, we have to continue doing what we are doing right.”

However, with the lack of focused development, there is a resultant rapid and progressive loss of technical expertise and understanding in the country and in a lot of the company’s clients, including government bodies.

The problems of South Africa are deep and fundamental. If one kept in mind that the world was becoming more technically advanced and things happened quicker, the lack of technical and engineering knowledge was just one of the factors that contributed to South Africa lagging in many ways, explained Furstenburg.

However, the company was proud of its enterprise development initiatives, namely Phakama Knight Piésold Consulting, in Polokwane, and Kayad Knight Piésold, in the Western Cape.

“The problem we now have with these enterprise developments is that they are doing so well and growing so fast that they are out-qualifying themselves for our enterprise development initiatives and we will soon have to find new enter- prises to support,” he enthused.

“In transcending the curse of competence, we need to continue to challenge the views we assume as good and true, to be competitive and innovative and to deliver what is needed – not what we think is needed,” he said, referring to a common engineering design mistake of assuming what clients want, rather than establishing in detail what clients need.

“I do not think we believe enough in the bright future that we have in this country. And I do not think we dream enough about what the place could be like. Today, we would like to invite you to share in that dream,” said Furstenburg.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit,” he said, quoting philosopher Aristotle.

He argued that doing what was necessary for a company to survive was not always sufficient to make it a great company, and urged South Africa to strive beyond what is only required by law and business.

Knight Piésold, together with various partners, is involved in the R2-billion development of the Western Aqueduct system, in eThkwini, is building the 1 300 MW Ingula pumped-storage scheme, in KwaZulu-Natal, worth R22-billion, and is closely involved in a number of other projects, including the building of a 405-m-long double-curvature bridge as part of the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project.

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