Ideally, engineering teams should reflect the accepted international municipal and utility ratio of six engineering professionals per 100 000 inhabitants. However, in South Africa’s best case scenarios – larger cities and towns – municipalities have access to three engineering professionals for each 100 000 inhabitants.

“This is not nearly enough to address our country’s service delivery needs, including water, sanitation and waste management. If allowed to continue, service delivery will all but come to a standstill,” says South African Institution of Civil Engineering (Saice) CEO Manglin Pillay.

Saice especially highlights the dilemma the Department of Water Affairs (DWA) faces in terms of its civil engineering skills base.

Saice fellow Dr Chris Herold says that, in May this year, the DWA had only 31% of its complement of civil engineers – or 78 out of 250 posts. Also, 25% of these were aged between 60 and 64, which means they will be retiring within the next five years – a loss which represents 44% of the chief engineers at the DWA.

Another worrying factor is that 24% of the top managers fall in the 55 to 59 age group.

Herold believes the long-term health of the DWA is seriously compromised since there are only ten candidate engineers at the bottom end of the scale.

Between these candidate engineers and the top end there are only 20 engineers in production grade, representing an “enormous . . . middle management gap” that will not be easy to fill.

Training engineers at South Africa’s tertiary institutions also presents a problem. According to Saice data, at some institutions, of the around 1 300 applications received, only about 400 applicants have the minimum requirement in maths and science, and only 20% of these can be accepted as first-year students as they have satisfactory symbols in these subjects.

The 2012 Saice president and first president of the Federation of African Engineering Organisations, Dr Martin van Veelen, emphasises that South Africa’s accumulated wisdom is vested in an ageing engineering corps, and that the challenge is to transfer this wisdom to young engineers.

He says Saice is in the process of taking action to address this problem, partially through its ‘Era of Civilution’ programme.

As part of this programme, Saice will host the Civilution Congress from April 6 to 8 next year, where engineers will seek ways to best approach the engineering and infrastructure challenges facing South Africa.

“It is time for engineers and engineering to redeem their esteem, prestige and respect; to take back what rightly belongs to us – excellence, ethical business practice, sustainability and making a difference,” adds Pillay.

Saice has also publicly stated its support for cement manufacturer PPC’s earlier plea for an Infrastructure Codesa to guide infrastructure development in South Africa.

“The provision of civil infrastructure is the surest way to improve the social and economic wealth of a nation,” says Pillay.

Possibly, the PPC Codesa could be part and parcel of the Civilution Congress, he notes.