Young professionals urged to take control of their future

12th August 2014

By: Natasha Odendaal

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

  

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While a survey of South Africa’s young consulting engineers has revealed a pessimistic perception of the industry, a clear message emerged at the Consulting Engineers South Africa (Cesa) Young Professionals Imbizo on Tuesday that the young engineers had to be their own activists, advocating and mobilising the change they wanted to see.

An introspective survey by the Young Professionals Forum (YPF), which operated under the auspices of Cesa, revealed remuneration, career development, training and mentorship as top issues for young consulting engineering graduates.

A lack of solid career development opportunities, or a lack of recognition, was the biggest concern for 57% of the 479 respondents who were asked to list their top woes in the 2014 National Young Professionals survey.

Forty-three per cent of those surveyed – representing about 2% of consulting engineering professionals and about 10% of young graduates across South Africa – added that their salary was insufficient and, despite 91% of the respondents being proud of their profession, half would abandon the consulting engineering industry in favour of higher packages.

Nearly 45% of the young professionals indicated that being a consulting engineer was not rewarding enough to retain young professionals.

However, 64% said they were aware of graduates having difficulty finding work.

Training and mentorship by companies also fell short, with 43% of respondents being unhappy with the training received from companies and 43% perceiving they did not receive the mentorship they coveted.

Further, the professional registration process was not understood by 53% of the respondents, while 14% added that tender and procurement processes were a challenge, and 81% believed that discounting consulting fees to arrive at lower tender prices for bids had an effect on the quality and accuracy of work.

Speaking at the Young Professionals Imbizo, in Kempton Park, former YPF treasurer Tafadzwa Mukwena said the survey identified priority issues impacting young professionals the most and would now lay the basis to determine a mitigation plan, with the results used to “force” certain actions.

Fidic MD Enrico Vink believed that speaking in “one voice” was the number one way of tackling the issues faced by consulting engineers and there was “strength in numbers”, while YPF Western Cape chairperson Michael Vice commented that the youth needed to be constructive and take responsibility for making a difference.

Vice suggested the development of YPF working committees and groups to lobby Cesa, the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) and the Construction Education and Training Authority (Ceta) to adopt certain practices to deal with challenges.

This included the incorporation of formal and structured training and mentorship in companies as mandatory for Cesa membership and ensuring that ECSA moved to make training and mentorship a requirement for registration.

Ceta would be expected to assist with funding allocation for training and mentorship programmes.

With regard to remuneration, the YPF working group should determine “fair value” and study surveys of professional pay-scales, while calling on ECSA to reconsider the relevance of the fee scales and Cesa to “market the value” of engineers.

Vice further suggested that Cesa develop a career development plan for member firms incorporating key performance indicators.

Meanwhile, Vice said he planned to hand over a letter to ECSA VP Adrian Peters calling for clarity on the professional registration process.

The contested tender and procurement processes, however, would be a “beast” to mitigate, Vice said, noting that the graduates supported Cesa’s efforts to have the current complex procurement strategies amended to take into account the value for money that could be provided to projects, as opposed to just the lowest price bid.

Part of the problem was that broad procurement processes were applied across the board and there was uncertainty as to where the issue actually stemmed from, commented Cesa supply chain management committee chairperson Arthur Taute.

Cesa CEO Lefadi Makibinyane noted that inputs had been made to National Treasury, but that the views were not embraced and greater advocacy was needed to ensure that Treasury amended the processes.

Taute concluded that the young engineers should get "negative enough" and "worried enough" to stand up and start the change they wanted to see.

Edited by Chanel de Bruyn
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor Online

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