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Skills shortages, inexperienced graduates and retirement severely impact the engineering sector

The increased number of construction projects in South Africa related to infrastructure and the 2010 Fifa Soccer World Cup appear not to have had any significant positive impact on unemployment in the engineering and construction sector, when considering the effect the recession has had on jobs in this sector.
At the same time, the skills shortage relating to both engineering professionals and other technically skilled categories continues in this sector, possibly jeopardising the on-time completion of certain projects.

This is despite a steady increase in the number of professional engineering practitioners registered with the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA), an increase in engineering graduates at South Africa’s universities drawn mainly from black communities, and notwithstanding a return of skilled professionals to the country due to the global recession.

On the employment front, the latest labour force survey for the fourth quarter of 2009 recently released by Statistics South Africa, shows that infrastructure and 2010 soccer construction projects that have been in full swing since early last year, have not impacted significantly on the country’s unemployment figures.

Any gains have been offset by recessionary losses.

While unemployment shot up as the economy shed close to one million jobs due to the recession, Statistics SA claims the corner has been turned and that some 89 000 jobs were created during the final quarter of last year.

The highest number of job gains was 77 000 in the financial sector, while construction followed with 28 000 job gains in the fourth quarter.

This was offset, however, by an overall loss in the construction sector for the year compared to the previous year of almost 9%.

And in the fine print, Stats SA deputy director-general Kefiloe Masiteng acknowledges that these ‘jobs’ gained were mostly elementary and informal in nature.

Any gains in the fourth quarter were in the narrow definition of unemployment, with Stats SA claiming an overall increase of 27 000 in the fourth quarter.

However, this does not include the broader definition, where the number of people discouraged from seeking employment increased by 54 000.

Meanwhile, most of the 480 000 people employed in temporary work opportunities last year, as announced by President Jacob Zuma in his State of the Nation Address, were employed temporarily in the Extended Public Works Programme linked to the government’s infrastructure programme. But these are not proper jobs of a permanent or longer term nature, and do not contribute much to the skills pool.

And while there may be a greater throughput of engineering graduates in South Africa’s universities, the skills situation remains acute, as there is a critical shortage of mid-career engineers who can mentor and skill the young engineering graduates.

At one end of the scale is an ageing and diminishing white population of engineers moving toward retirement, while at the other end, there is a growing pool of young, inexperienced black engineering graduates.

This is confirmed by Graham Pirie, who is the chief executive officer of Consulting Engineers South Africa (CESA), who says CESA has been responding to that problem with a number of programmes.

Engineers, however, are a scarce resource internationally and engineers are generally very mobile, he adds.

“We do have a lot of local talent, though. The specialised talent we need for projects such as the Gautrain project, we import.”

To stimulate the provision of fresh engineering talent in South Africa, CESA established the School of Consulting Engineering (SCE) in 2002, which aims to provide the opportunity for consulting engineers, their staff, their clients and others working in the built environment to enhance their business, professional and entrepreneurial skills.

In addition, CESA established the Young Professionals Forum (YPF) that consists of engineers under the age of 35 employed by CESA members firms “who are interested in ensuring the sustainability and promotion of the profession”.

Among its activities is the promotion of the engineering profession in communities and at schools and universities.

Tendai Dhliwayo, spokesperson for ECSA, acknowledges that “we cannot run away from the fact that currently, there is a skills shortage within the engineering sector.

“Presently, ECSA has about 33 000 registered practitioners, and records indicate there is a steady rise in the number of people being registered.

“Our institutions of higher learning are also doing all they can to produce engineering graduates,"

“ECSA and the industry, together with universities, are collaborating efforts to encourage students to take up maths and science, which will eventually lead to their taking up engineering at tertiary level,” he added.

But Dhliwayo is cautious to venture an opinion as to how this skills shortage may be impacting on the completion, or not, of the current infrastructure and 2010 projects.

“It is difficult to say, and it must be noted that the actual execution of projects happens elsewhere and ECSA does not keep an eye on how projects are running,” is all he will venture.

Dhliwayo will not say whether the industry failed to supply sufficient numbers of adequately qualified, trained and skilled engineers for these projects, but says: “The supply of qualified personnel in all spheres of the economy is an ongoing issue.

“It is likely that demand will continue to outstrip supply for the foreseeable future.”

Neither can he say what the impact has been of South African engineers leaving the country or of those returning due to the recession.

“The engineering industry is not immune to brain drain affecting other professions. We have a good number of our engineers working in other regions of the world.

“However, it has to be noted that South Africa relies heavily on skills brought in by professionals from other countries. As we are part of the global community, we can expect this,” adds Dhliwayo.

“Some South African-trained personnel leave on short- or long-term contracts, then return. In the interim, foreign contractors may come to South Africa and leave when the term of their contract expires,” he says, adding that it is difficult to generalise.

He cannot verify whether the global recession has forced many qualified and skilled South Africans – also in the engineering sphere – to return home.

“As mentioned earlier, we have a situation where some leave and some immigrate, and South Africa still relies on certain skills brought in by people from other regions.

“Currently, we do not have statistics on how many have returned due to the recession, but it’s safe to say that our database of registered personnel has grown to 33 000,” says Dhliwayo.

The skills shortage in the engineering and construction sector is extending its impact also in the sphere of project managers.

On the larger construction projects, most of them are recruited from the ranks of experienced and skilled engineers.

Jeff Shaw, a director at KPMG responsible for Project Advisory Services, says research undertaken by his firm has highlighted that in South Africa, as elsewhere, skills restraints remain one of the major problems.

Shaw believes that in future, the government will become more sophisticated in building training requirements into projects, as has been done, for example, with the Gautrain project.

He believes the quality of training in South Africa at the level of engineers is still good, but that there is a lack of depth and quality training in other spheres.

He, too, sees practical experience and mentoring as invaluable, but adds that mentors are overloaded.

All these issues have caused concern in the sector that a number of 2010 projects are under pressure, not least because of the dire skills situation.

“President Jacob Zuma told the World Economic Forum in Switzerland [in February] that South Africa was well on track with its 2010 projects. We hope that is the case,” says Pirie.

Research released last year by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) has shown that the severe shortage of engineers in South Africa is putting much strain on the country’s infrastructure programme.

While South Africa had managed substantially to increase the numbers of engineers produced in the past 10 years, the country was not producing them fast enough to meet demand, says the HSRC.

Shaw says it is essential that the government’s infrastructure projects should go ahead for the necessary skills to be developed. But the large projects linked to the 2010 World Cup have been the “easy ones”, with ample skilled people available, he says.

The problem now will come with smaller projects spread more widely and requiring many more project managers, such as with water reticulation projects, for example.

Professor Herman Steyn of the Graduate School of Technology Management at the University of Pretoria says that practical experience is essential.

But those capable of serving as mentors in various organisations are the ones doing all the project management work and are so overloaded that they have no time for mentoring.

Steyn, however, also sees a problem with regard to numbers when it comes to the larger physical projects. “For these projects, engineers have to be trained as project managers, but the number of people graduating as engineers has been declining (compared over a longer cycle).”

He blames the South African schools system and low maths literacy for this.

Steyn adds that his university hopes to increase its number of engineering students and is building new facilities for the purpose.

Dr Erik Schmikl, who heads up Synerlead International and teaches at Cranefield College, a Pretoria-based project and programme management institution, believes that South Africa will be able to deliver on its infrastructure requirements in time for 2010, and also for future requirements in the medium to longer term.

But that, he says, will have to be done “with help from outside contracted experienced resources as they do in the case of the Gautrain Project”.

“But this strategy costs a lot in foreign capital. Without these additionally subcontracted resource skills and experience, projects may fall behind and will not all deliver on time,” adds Dr Schmikl.

In the final analysis, Shaw says, South Africa will have to grow its own skills, as it does not have the competitive advantage to attract foreign skills.

CESA’s newly appointed president Zulch Lötter points out that the greatest concern, however, is the lack of technical management capacity in the municipal and provincial government spheres.

He says that unless this problem is redressed, it is likely to be “the single biggest stumbling block to sustainable development and growth in our country”.

CESA has estimated that the percentage of professional engineers working in the public sector had dropped from 40% in 1980 to 15% by 2005.

In the same period, the number of professional engineers in the consulting industry had increased from 30% to almost 50%.

Stef Terblanche

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