Construction World March 2017

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CONSTRUCTION WORLD MARCH 2017 2
COMMENT
EDITOR & DEPUTY PUBLISHER
Wilhelm du Plessis
ADVERTISING MANAGER
Erna Oosthuizen
LAYOUT & DESIGN
Lesley Testa
CIRCULATION
Karen Smith
TOTAL CIRCULATION:
(Fourth Quarter ’16)
4 738
PUBLISHER
Karen Grant
PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY
Crown Publications cc
P O Box 140
BEDFORDVIEW, 2008
Tel: 27 11-622-4770 • Fax: 27 11-615-6108
The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the editor or the publisher.
PRINTED BY
Tandym Cape
@ConstWorldSA
Construction World is publishing a supplement on
behalf of the Southern African Light Steel Frame
Building Association SASFA. The supplement will
celebrate this building method and highlight how it
is becoming increasingly popular.
• Please contact Erna Ooshuizen
) for more detail.
There are various reasons why Pretorius decided on
sustainable transformation as her theme. As of June 2016,
53% of the CESA membership was white. When only
professional engineers are considered, this figure increases
to 84%. Of the 533 firms on CESA’s database, only 122 firms
are black-owned, between 4 and 6% of the staff employed by
CESA are woman and of these only 12% are actually consulting
engineering professionals.
This, shockingly, after 20 years of measures to rectify the
ills of the past – the most notable of these are Broad-based
Black Empowerment and the Preferential Procurement Policy
Framework. Brown says that such policies often resulted in
‘fronting’ and that true, sustainable transformation was often
not achieved. As a result questions are being asked about
the effectiveness of the BBBEE scorecard in
realising transformation.
Driving transformation
The presidential theme for CESA this year is driven by CESA’s
transformation committee – this comprises members of both
established and emerging firms. As its main aim, this committee
will promote transformation as an ethical business practice and
monitor progress made by its members. It will aim to increase
the participation of black engineering professionals at various
levels within member firms.
The transformation of individual firms will in time lead to the
transformation of CESA as a whole. It has identified various
The fact that there are so few female engineers in the consulting
engineering industry has raised serious concerns about
transformation in general.
CESA president, Lynne Pretorius, recently
indicated that her theme for 2017 is for
CESA to take the lead in transforming its
membership and the industry.
support programmes for small, medium and micro enterprises
– such enterprises make up 95% of CESA’s membership. It will
furthermore partner with government departments to second
young engineering staff in the public sector to the private
sector, launch awareness programmes for women engineers,
while BBEEE scorecards will be more detailed so as to measure
and monitor actual transformation.
Wilhelm du Plessis
Editor