A back-to-basics approach is needed to ride out the current economic environment and bring the consulting engineering sector back in from the cold, Consulting Engineers South Africa (Cesa) president Lynne Pretorius said at her first presidential address earlier this month.

Speaking at the yearly event, Cesa’s first female president marked the occasion with a promise to map a sustainable path for consulting engineers amid growing economic challenges in South Africa.

Pretorius, who holds BSc Engineering (Civil) and M Engineering (Transportation) degrees from the University of Cape Town, will focus on how the organisation can support the industry to deliver more with less, form strategic partnerships, remain active and vigilant advocates for the industry and accelerate transformation.

“We are amidst challenging economic times . . . We must just keep it simple. We know the basics, we need to do it well,” she added, stating her commitment to getting Cesa’s house in order as the country battled low gross domestic product growth, an investment grade that had been downgraded to just above junk status, increasing service delivery protests, a lack of good governance, an ongoing drought and labour instability.

Social instability, ever-increasing unemployment and failing infrastructure – including substations, pumpstations, pipelines and roads – on the back of a lack of timeous maintenance and investment, and a depreciating rand, are also significant challenges facing the country.

This is in addition to the domino effect of power constraints and infrastructure backlogs to the tune of some R850-billion over three years.

“The economic outlook, coupled with limited technical skills, appears to be crippling and stifling the economy. The project pipeline looks good, but can it be delivered? The profession is ageing, but there is also significant growth in the number of young engineering practitioners,” she said.

However, despite a whirlwind end to 2015, Pretorius found some optimism for the year ahead.

South Africa has the most developed construction market in Africa, second only to Nigeria, with large-scale capital expenditure plans for infrastructure guided by the National Development Plan (NDP), while investment in port and rail infrastructure is ongoing, as is investment in housing.

The country is making strides in the achievement of the NDP goals, with significant infrastructure investment planned in key sectors, such as information and communication technology, transport, power and water.

While South Africa has “many good things” to look forward to, external influences have a profound impact on society at large and, with the constraints South Africa faces, consulting engineers are now required to “do more with less”.

Companies are being urged to take innovative approaches, leverage multiprofessional teams and fast-track the mentoring and training of young engineers, to unlock the possibility of delivering higher quality, efficiently for less profit, during the economic downturn.

Pretorius further suggested companies improve their bids and cost estimates, with a focus on quality, for projects to make procurement in a competitive environment easier.

Consulting engineers continue to battle procurement challenges, with trade-offs in quality being seen, in some instances, in favour of the lowest-cost bid.

Pretorius pointed out that, once bidding competitors had passed the initial minimum standards required to bid, which included a set quality threshold, it was “all about” the lowest price.

“Quality is not being considered to the level it should be,” she said of price-linked competitive bidding and discounting, which Cesa believed should include quality as a key criteria in the selection of engineering consultants and not just a seeding out threshold.

“The current economic outlook and concerns about the public sector’s ability to finance and undertake massive infrastructure investment require the profession to assess its skills and ability to meet the challenging environment.”

Forming partnerships between industry bodies, key role-players and government will further ensure quality and uniformity in engineering consulting practice and create a conducive business environment.

Transformation acceleration is also an essential focus for the industry body, with the number of black engineers and women within Cesa’s membership hovering at around 30% and 12% respectively since 2008.

Pretorius maintained that Cesa would continue its “active advocacy” to identify corruption, monitor compliance and engage relevant stakeholders relating to technical standards, procurement processes and best practice.