Accompanied by Graham Pirie of the Southern Cape branch and other CESA members, the group also undertook an inspection of the Mossel Bay desalination plant (a joint project between Mossel Bay Municipality and PetroSA).
Speaking to the George Herald earlier this week, Kevin Grünewald, the head of the George electrotechnical department, said construction work on the 132 000 volt Schaapkop substation, which will give a direct feed to Pacaltsdorp and Tamsui from next month, is near completion. Eskom’s substation right next to it will be completed by August this year.
Whilst addressing the Southern Cape branch at a reception held at Dutton’s Cove last week, Lötter said, "CESA and its members are at the forefront of infra-structure development in South Africa and keen to assist Government in this regard. Awareness needs to be created of CESA’s role in improving the state of South Africa’s infrastructure, so necessary to enhance economic growth and development and the creation of employment, and in order to alleviate poverty in our country. "One of the greatest issues is government procurement practices. Government believes that we have some of the best practice guidelines in the world, but they are useless in the hands of an uninformed consultant or clients.
"To this end CESA, in conjunction with the Construction Industry Development Board (cidb), developed a Guideline for the Best Practice Procurement of Consulting Services and also conducted a nationwide road show during 2010. The Guideline was presented to clients in the public sector as well as to consultants. The road show was so successful that it is being repeated during 2011," said Lötter.
As far as skills development is concerned, CESA’s School of Consulting Engineering (SCE) presented 124 training courses to over 2000 delegates during 2010.
The SCE is currently in the process of compiling a Certificate of Consulting Engineering in Business Administration. This modular course is due to be launched during 2011 and is aimed at strengthening the business administration capabilities of the industry. Lötter firmly contends that the strongest ‘pulling’ power to increase the number of engineers is investment in infrastructure from both government as well as the private sector.
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Jan Brink (SSI), Willem du Toit (SAIEE), Graham Pirie (CESA Southern Cape) and Attie Bedeker (WorleyParsons) at the reception held by CESA.
ARTICLE AND PHOTOS: PAULINE LOURENS
