Consulting Engineers South Africa (Cesa) member firms have indicated their preparedness to partner with government to reduce irregular expenditure.

The commitment was made at the Cesa Infrastructure Indaba, held in early November in Durban. The purpose of the indaba was to create a platform for dialogue between consulting engineers, contractors and clients, who pledged to work together to improve the quality of services from the construction industry.

Under the theme ‘Working towards improved delivery of infrastructure and engineering services’, the indaba participants deliberated on and addressed #WhatMustRise in order that the industry increasingly employs graduates and students seeking in-service training, a prerequisite to their development as future competent practitioners in the field of engineering.

Cesa president Lynne Pretorius reiterated during her address that Cesa would actively partner with stakeholders to improve on the process of infrastructure delivery in South Africa. She said that, despite a challenging environment, it was imperative that Cesa formed partnerships with those role-players with whom it shared similar values.

Further, Pretorius pointed out that, in meeting the development challenges of South Africa, Cesa had to partner with government. “Our industry presents a particular skill set that is required in the delivery of infrastructure to meet South Africa’s social and developmental goals. Unlocking project and business opportunities requires us to partner with government. This is particularly relevant in implementing an improved procurement environment for the consulting engineering profession.”

One of the resolutions adopted at the indaba was that Cesa would assist client bodies, such as the KwaZulu-Natal provincial government – which participated in the indaba – in fulfilling their visions and missions in support of improved service delivery.

Cesa views as “disheartening and concerning” Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu’s report on national and provincial departments’ audit outcomes, which reveal that irregular expenditure has increased by nearly 80% to R46.36-billion in the 2015/16 financial year. The main reason for the increase in irregular expenditure was the continued noncompliance with supply chain management regulation and lack of consequence management.

Irregular expenditure represents expenditure incurred for the procurement of goods and services without following prescribed processes or adhering to good contract management principles, for example, when tenders are awarded to service providers without the prerequisite competence and delivery record and insufficient attention being paid to quality and value for money.

Cesa points out that one definite potential source of this irregular expenditure is the commissioning of professional engineering services where insufficient planning is done to provide definitive scopes of work for such service providers to respond accordingly. Inadequate contract management during the infrastructure delivery process is another. The new standard for infrastructure procurement and delivery management launched by National Treasury this year, supported “wholeheartedly” by Cesa, is aimed at enforcing the adherence to best practices in this process.

To address these sources of leakage, Cesa welcomes a strengthened relationship with the public-sector to achieve a win-win situation. “We would even go as far as encouraging public-sector client bodies to require such professional service providers to be members of industry associations such as ours, so that we can become a trusted adviser to them, while keeping our industry members honest,” says Pretoruis.

Cesa CEO Chris Campbell, however, cautioned that it was unfortunate that not all consulting engineers were registered with a body like Cesa. “There is no accountability for those who choose to fly under the radar.”