Consulting Engineers South Africa (Cesa) has committed to transforming its membership and the industry as a whole.

The industry body, which has identified transformation as a critical theme, has established a transformation committee that will embark on a process to develop proposed interventions to drive real and sustainable transformation in the industry.

The committee will also develop a transformation action plan, putting building blocks in place to unlock growth and transformation in the engineering and consulting engineering sectors.

“Although significant strides have been made by government to transform society, South Africa is still facing many obstacles more than 20 years after democracy,” Cesa president Lynne Pretorius said while presenting Cesa’s 2017 strategic intent at a conference in Midrand, on Thursday.
 
She explained that the committee will promote transformation as an ethical business practice and monitor progress made by its members beyond the requirements of the Construction sector scorecard.

In addition, it will help members understand that transformation is an ongoing process, facilitate sustainable broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE) practices within the industry and promote the practice through members' professional and business activities.

“This intervention is essential considering that levels of black ownership in the sector are low across the industry.”

She said Cesa will embark on various programmes over the next few years to deal with challenges surrounding transformation, which will entail setting clearly defined transformation goals, projects and programmes, to enable successful implementation.

She highlighted that women in the industry still face many barriers and that plans need to be put in place to overcome the obstacles women face.

The number of female engineering staff employed by Cesa members is only 4% to 6% of total consulting engineering professionals, and black women make up just 12% of this group.

“Within the context of transformation, programmes have to be developed to acknowledge the hurdles faced by women and gender concerns and challenges must become part of mainstream industry discussions,” Pretorius commented.

Cesa’s employment breakdown indicates that black people are typically employed lower down on the professional hierarchy as technicians, technical assistants and laboratory or survey assistants.

“Within Cesa’s membership base only 122 of the 533 firms are more than 51% black-owned; women remain in the minority; and 53% of staff and 84% of professional engineers across the membership are white,” she explained.
Pretorius pointed out that overall assessment of employment by race indicates that the percentage of black employment has varied between 40% and 50% since 2007.

Transformation of the consulting engineering profession is also being hindered by the limited number of learners competent in science and maths leaving the school system, she noted.

“This is particularly concerning when considering that the industry has to compete with other sectors to attract talent from a small pool to engineering programmes.”

Cesa’s interventions to drive real and sustainable transformation will include developing a pipeline of engineering professionals over the long term by identifying and supporting learners with a technical aptitude at secondary school level.

It will also consolidate efforts to create and implement a process for supporting tertiary engineering students and mentor graduate engineering staff in the workplace to develop the skills and competencies required for professional registration.

“We need to ensure we have a transformed profession and membership,” she said.