T Didiza: Construction Built Environment Meeting

13 August 2007

Programme director
Chairperson of the CBE, Mr Sipho Madonsela
Members of the CBE Board and Professional Councils
Deans and representatives of the built environment faculties
Distinguished guests

It gives me great pleasure to join you at today's meeting which assembles
key representatives of the built environment professions and institutions of
higher education to address the challenges faced in developing our professional
skills base.

I would like to thank the Council for the Construction Built Environment
(CBE) for bringing us together to take stock of progress and challenges, to
identify critical interventions; and to map out a path of co-operation between
academia, the professions, business and government.

The CBE is charged with co-ordinating the professional regulatory systems
necessary to the performance and health of the various built environment
professions. The Institutions of Higher Education shape and renew our
professional expertise, a scarce resource of high value in South Africa's
agenda for growth and transformation. Together we must elevate our efforts to
ensure the professional capability necessary to meet rapidly growing
construction demand.

Growth, a challenge to all stakeholders

The expansion of our built environment is a key to Accelerated and Shared
Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA). Construction growth is driven by
probably the largest public investment in infrastructure our country has ever
seen. Specifically, in order to create the infrastructure for growth and
development, government is increasing public sector capital budgets at an
unprecedented rate of 10 to 15 percent per annum.

With overall growth rates of more than 10 percent per annum, the
construction industry is likely to treble its output in 10 years. Cement and
other materials manufacturers are also expanding their production capacity to
meet this rising demand.

This growth path creates immense opportunity for employment, skills
development and for empowerment. It also presents all stakeholders with
challenges that require new responses and intensified effort to grow our
capacity. It is the capability of the built environment professions that bring
to bear the conception, development, implementation and the long term operation
of our infrastructure. It is the institutions of higher learning that shape
this critical human capital.

A competent and transformed professional skills base is critical to the
delivery capacity of industry, government and the private sector.

Challenges and achievements

Responding to the growth challenge a number of initiatives have endeavoured
to understand the skills deficit and to signpost a way forward. These include
the Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa), the Construction
Industry Development Board (CIDB) study skills for infrastructure delivery in
South Africa, and the CBE framework for a skills strategy.

On the basis of these initiatives, stakeholders have already begun to
implement concrete interventions that address some of the constraints to
development of the built environment professions.

In the first instance we have recognised that these constraints stretch over
the entire skills pipeline, including:

* suitable matriculation graduates
* the capacity of our tertiary institutions
* the experiential training required to achieve competent professional practice
and registration
* the role of continuous professional development.

We have also recognised that government, the professions, business and
institutions of higher learning all have a role to play at each stage of this
development pipeline. It would be important today to review not only the
constraints, challenges and new initiatives, but also our ability to
consolidate existing initiatives into a national programme of action.

We are all aware that the fundamental overhaul of our education system is an
ongoing process. I am pleased that a senior representative of the Department of
Education, Mr Feroz Patel will address today's meeting on steps taken by his
department, including progress made in the recapitalisation of Higher Education
Institutions and Further Education Training (FET) Colleges.

Although gradual, progress in transforming our education system is
increasingly evident. The Construction Industry Status Report of 2004 noted
that in 2004 the percentage of matriculants with higher grade maths and science
had increased. Together with an improving overall matric pass rate this
represented (at the time) a 10 percent increase in the total pool of available
entrants to tertiary level education. I trust this trend is continuing and
hopefully improving.

However, we still need to attract these potential entrants into the built
environment professions that compete with other career options, notably in the
financial and Information Technology (IT) sectors. Regrettably, many that do
choose a built environment career are dropping out. It has been estimated that
about 20 percent of engineering students fail to make it into the second year
of study.

This through put rate is an unacceptable waste of resources and of
investment by parents and young people. It needs to be clearly understood so
that we can identify appropriate responses by all stakeholders in the form of
bursaries, bridging courses and mentoring programmes. It is interesting to
note, for example, that the University of KwaZulu-Natal has a bridging
programme in place called the "Unite" programme specifically for the
engineering students where a 95 percent pass rate is achieved.

I am also aware of a number of initiatives by the construction industry.
These range from bursaries and internships to other forms of support to Higher
Education Institutions, including the equipping of computer laboratories, and
an expressed readiness to second practitioners to lecture in various built
environment disciplines.

Government departments, including national and provincial public works
already provide bursaries and internships to built environment students, but we
are aware of the need to achieve greater impact.

Public work's planned contribution to the National Youth Service (NYS) will
include the recruitment and built environment skills training of no less than
10 000 unemployed youth and graduates. The national department has also
identified the potential to employ and mentor about 260 unemployed built
environment graduates, to ensure that they obtain the necessary experiential
training to enable them to complete their qualifications and register as built
environment professionals. Provincial public works departments are doing
likewise.

In the Western Cape, through the initiative of my colleague, MEC Marius
Fransman, Public Works is pioneering co-operation between government and
business to expand the provision of built environment bursaries. Last week we
were able to launch the Masakh' iSizwe Bursary Collaboration Venture (BCV).

This venture represents a unique form of partnership to deliver bursaries
combining private resources with those of the National Skills Fund. Based on a
sliding scale of contribution, the BCV financing model enables large and small
companies to contribute to engineering and built environment skills and to
experiential training. Notably, in line with our transformation objectives, the
programme has a substantive focus on black and women students. We will monitor
progress with a view to a national roll-out.

Challenges to the institutions and participants

I have mentioned just a few of many positive interventions. But in view of
the current growth trajectory and the skills gap, we cannot be satisfied with
our efforts to date. Today's meeting must identify constraints, possible
further interventions, consolidation and areas of co-operation to achieve
greater impact.

It is particularly worrying that many of our graduates are not finding
employment. There is still a great disparity in the curriculum and quality of
qualifications offered by different institutions, suggesting perhaps a need for
greater standardisation, particularly in line with the needs of the industry.
Standardisation would facilitate student articulation between tertiary
institutions.

It is also unacceptable that graduates of some of our Institutions of Higher
Education are unable to gain professional registration because we have not yet
succeeded to co-ordinate the accreditation of these institutions by both the
Council for Higher Education and the relevant professional councils.

Our goals for transformation of the professions also require us to recognise
the challenges facing those students from historically disadvantaged
backgrounds, including blacks and women. These are not only financial in
nature. They relate also to basic education and the exposure of our youth to
issues of the built environment.

Attracting and retaining a quality research and academic capability is
another critical challenge facing higher education. Meeting this challenge also
requires collaborative intervention. In the context of limited resources it may
be necessary, as a first step, to consider concentrating resources to create
centres of academic excellence.

South Africa's built environment professions are internationally recognised
and sought after in the global contest for competent technical skills. We must
ask ourselves, however, whether we are we doing enough, both educationally and
in terms of professional registration, to instil in our professions an ethos of
national pride and service to a developmental state.

Conclusion

Our meeting coincides with National Construction Week, instituted by
government to mark the significance of the construction industry as creator of
the built environment. Its key aim is to mobilise the partnership of
government, industry and tertiary institutions in attracting and promoting
young people into construction and built environment careers.

I have no doubt that today's meeting will reflect on trends, constraints and
possible interventions to address critical skills of the built environment
professions. I wish you fruitful discussion that must crystallise into action
the effort of all stakeholders. The meeting can be assured of government's
commitment to the professions as a national asset in our development
agenda.

The intrinsic value of the professions lies in their ability to deliver the
infrastructure for economic growth and to shape a more equitable built
environment for all the people of South Africa.

I thank you.

Issued by: Department of Public Works
13 August 2007