‘Poor project management the root of SA’s crises’
● South Africa finds itself in an economic and governance rut because it has failed to adequately benchmark standards in the project management profession, according to Sinaye Mgolombane, chair of the board of Project Management South Africa (PMSA).
“Our profession and project management broadly have low entry barriers. Unlike law, medicine, engineering, and accounting, anyone can be a project manager. Even the security guard at the gate could rebrand tomorrow to be a project manager.”
Mgolombane was speaking at the Global Alliance for Project Professions conference in Cape Town in October.
“The failure of Eskom project management means we have now all become accustomed to load-shedding. For obvious reasons, I will not mention the SOE [state-owned enterprise] responsible for logistics, but I think we all know the challenges there. South Africa’s low growth, extreme poverty and unemployment are also a result of project management failures.”
His remarks came as Eskom grapples with the load-shedding challenge and Transnet struggles with a logistics crisis that has prevented South Africa from moving goods in and out of the country.
Mgolombane said most organisations relegate project management to junior levels even though it was “at the heart of corporate sustainability”.
“Many executive leadership teams demonstrate limited understanding and ability to apply project management principles that could help their teams. I’m not sure how some executive committee members operate given this problem.”
He said organisations tend to plan only for the short term, which drives them to make decisions that are often not directed by evidence-based analysis. This leads to poorly designed projects at best, and often, poorly planned and executed projects.
“I could use many examples but cannot help but think about Eskom’s turnaround plan, which despite more than 10 years of promises hasn’t materialised. By focusing on short-term issues the Eskom leaders failed to address long-term structural issues,” he said.
PMSA non-executive director Xolelwa Ntlango recently told Business Times that the gaps in standardised accreditation for project management professionals were a major challenge, hindering the country from consistently delivering world-class projects.
In this regard, the government’s patience with SOEs over their operational and financial chaos is finally wearing thin. Finance minister Enoch Godongwana was blunt about Transnet’s shortcomings when he tabled his medium-term budget policy statement this week.
He said the National Treasury was working with Transnet and the department of public enterprises to ensure Transnet meets its immediate debt obligations.
“We have not factored Transnet for a bailout as part of the budget process, to my knowledge. They came to us a couple of weeks ago with an invoice for it.
“What is the lesson we learn? On the basis of trust, you give money and you don’t realise the return on investment. This time around, we won’t give funding until we have an assurance that whatever support we give, for example, we give to Transnet and the sector.”
Godongwana said the government was now interested in fixing SOEs as well as making a meaningful investment in the sectors in which they operate.