Standards worry engineering body

Industry body Consulting Engineers of SA (Cesa) says the new standard for infrastructure procurement and delivery management is critical to managing South African engineering projects better. Cesa CEO Chris Campbell said corners had been cut to reduce costs.

Industry body Consulting Engineers of SA (Cesa) says the new standard for infrastructure procurement and delivery management is critical to better manage engineering projects in SA.

Cesa CEO Chris Campbell said there had been concern that some people working in the industry on large cost-sensitive projects had skipped engineering steps to cut costs.

The standard, which has been issued by the Treasury, is meant to help firms bridge the need to procure goods at competitive costs and to deliver services without making compromises to quality.

Cesa represents more than 500 companies employing about 23,000 people in various engineering capacities.

The standard was issued as a follow-up to the country’s National Development Plan 2030, which proposed a focus on certain areas when designing a procurement system that would deliver value for money while minimising the scope for corruption. The standard seeks to achieve differentiation between the different types of procurement that pose different challenges and require different skills sets.

The standard would allow for an easier and more effective costing of projects, especially large-scale state projects, Campbell said.

“Often a person will choose the cheaper bid for a project which maybe does not have an accredited engineer attached to it. Then, when things go wrong, it ends up costing more than the other bid which had the correct quality assurance in place.

“We’ve found that large projects are especially costsensitive. So if somebody misses out a step with planning and then you have people sitting idle who have to be paid, you get delays and higher costs. The standard helps to manage projects so that problems are prevented,” said Campbell.

“The standard also considered the urgent need to separate supply chain management requirements for general goods and services from those for infrastructure delivery in order to improve project outcomes.

THE STANDARD, ISSUED BY THE TREASURY, HELPS TO MANAGE PROJECTS SO THAT PROBLEMS CAN BE PREVENTED

Cesa was providing training to municipal officials about the standard and also planned to spend more time educating the public about the engineering profession, Campbell said.

“People often think engineers study for about four years and then they run projects immediately. Instead, it takes about 10 years to become a registered professional engineer, about as long as it takes to become a doctor. We encourage companies and the state to work with properly accredited engineers.