As the Department of Public Works (DPW) emerged from the “intensive care unit” and had “stabilised”, the department was now moving to develop critical and scarce skills to maintain the momentum, Public Works Minister Thulas Nxesi said on Friday.

The output from its Young Professionals programme would bolster the skills the DPW currently lacked and would enable the technical skills required to identify, plan and manage effective projects for the public sector.

The absorption of technical skills would also enable the department to cut back on consultancy fees, which were overly expensive, and empower the department to manage and monitor its own projects.

"The DPW has struggled to manage State assets for years. Its protracted problems are well documented [and range from a] lack of consistency with [regard to] leadership posts, skills and accountability to lease scandals reported by the media, mismanagement, corruption and no asset register to speak of,” he had noted previously.

A lack of skills was mostly to blame for the deterioration.

The educational programme accelerated registration of built environment professionals through significant mentorship and structured training in quantity surveying, construction project management, landscape architecture, town planning, property valuation, architecture and interior design, and civil, structural, mechanical and electrical engineering.

The department had moved to “rebuild” its technical capacity and “grow its own” skills, while working with the private sector to inject more proficiency into the built environment sector.

Of the 45 young professionals successfully completing the programme and obtaining their professional registration through the initiative since 2010, 22 would be absorbed into the department after the conclusion of its turnaround restructure.

Simultaneously, the DPW planned to stimulate transformation in an industry that only boasted 25% black registered professionals.

On Friday, Nxesi, along with Higher Education and Training Deputy Minister Mduduzi Manana, handed 26 young professionals their certificates after they attained professional registration status.

The programme also enabled ongoing training and development, and increased the exposure of candidates to national and international projects and exchange opportunities to ensure skills appropriate to the DPW’s needs were developed.

Support interventions included quarterly monitoring by the Human Capital Investment unit, which would track the young professionals’ progress, deal with challenges and recommend solutions.

The Young Professionals programme dipped into disadvantaged and rural regions to source talent from technical schools, and was run in conjunction with the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) and the Council for the Built Environment.

More funding would be sourced from, besides others, the Construction Education and Training Board to increase throughput and candidates over the next year.

The CIDB would also, next week, launch new national standards for construction development, which included model clauses for infrastructure contracts to include more and better training opportunities for technicians, artisans and professionals in the built environment.

“We, as government, are not just going to give contracts,” Nxesi said, indicating that skills development programmes would be key considerations moving forward.