Consulting engineering firms are providing inferior, lower-quality services and completing projects over longer timeframes than necessary, owing to broad-based black economic-empowerment (BBBEE) compliance requirements, states midtier consulting engineering firm M-Tech Consulting Engineers.
This is because many high-level BBBEE-compliant companies avoid employing highly skilled and experienced partners and consultants – who might not boost their BBBEE ratings – for underskilled and inexperienced partners who do boost their BBBEE ratings, says M-Tech marketing director Gerrit Coetzee.
“Often, consulting companies with the right BBBEE profiles do not have the necessary expertise, which normally results in organisations not getting quality service from these types of consultants,” he elaborates.
Coetzee cites several smaller municipalities struggling to operate and maintain their service infrastructure in a cost-effective and sustainable manner as an example of using underqualified consultants who happen to be BBBEE-compliant. He says the result of this is a rapid deterioration of assets, followed by catastrophic component failure and regular, prolonged disruptions in service delivery.
Compounding this challenge is that obtaining suitable black partners is difficult, as potential black partners are hard to find, owing to the highly specialised nature of the consulting engineering field, says Coetzee.
“Skills in such highly specialised areas are hard to find for consulting companies, as black people with such skills are snatched up by big companies and the public sector at prohibitive salaries. Consulting firms just cannot compete.”
About M-Tech
M-Tech Consulting Engineers was established in 1987 to render consulting services in the maintenance and mechanical engineering fields. Mechanical consulting services were, however, discontinued a few years later when one of the original shareholders withdrew from the company. Then, in 1992, M-Tech identified a need for maintenance training in the country and started meeting that requirement.
The business is currently led by its MD, who is one of the original founders, Dr Jasper Coetzee. Coetzee is also a part-time professor of maintenance engineering at the University of Pretoria.
Today, M-Tech concentrates on consulting and training in the broad area of physical asset management. Its services also include providing maintenance audits, maintenance improvement, maintenance logistics, reliability-centred maintenance studies and failure analysis.