Question NW1038 to the Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure:

Reply:

The Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure

1. The Council for the Built Environment (CBE) has the statutory mandate to ensure consistent application of policy by the councils for the build environment professions (CBEP) with regard to, among other things, the registration of different categories of registration (See section 4(k)(ii) of Council for the Built Environment Act, (Act No. 43 of 2000). To this end Policy Frameworks were approved by the Minister and the CBE is monitoring the alignment of CBEP policies with the approved policy frameworks, including the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) registration policy. The CBE furthermore acts as an appeal body for matters referred to it in terms of the legislation regulating the CBEP, including a refusal of registration by ECSA should it happen. A person aggrieved by ECSA’s refusal to register, that person upon application may appeal to the CBE against the decision of ECSA. The CBE has not received an appeal against a decision by ECSA not to register a person in the last four years.
2. The number of qualified engineers and technologists that have registered with the ECSA in each year since ECSA’s establishment in 2000;

Count	Year	Description
383	2000	Professional Engineer
131	2000	Professional Engineering Technologist
377	2001	Professional Engineer
140	2001	Professional Engineering Technologist
283	2002	Professional Engineer
179	2002	Professional Engineering Technologist
313	2003	Professional Engineer
207	2003	Professional Engineering Technologist
370	2004	Professional Engineer
166	2004	Professional Engineering Technologist
324	2005	Professional Engineer
135	2005	Professional Engineering Technologist
324	2006	Professional Engineer
212	2006	Professional Engineering Technologist
342	2007	Professional Engineer
162	2007	Professional Engineering Technologist
422	2008	Professional Engineer
313	2008	Professional Engineering Technologist
416	2009	Professional Engineer
304	2009	Professional Engineering Technologist
473	2010	Professional Engineer
301	2010	Professional Engineering Technologist
529	2011	Professional Engineer
372	2011	Professional Engineering Technologist
662	2012	Professional Engineer
436	2012	Professional Engineering Technologist
775	2013	Professional Engineer
420	2013	Professional Engineering Technologist
548	2014	Professional Engineer
410	2014	Professional Engineering Technologist
516	2015	Professional Engineer
398	2015	Professional Engineering Technologist
932	2016	Professional Engineer
346	2016	Professional Engineering Technologist
466	2017	Professional Engineer
271	2017	Professional Engineering Technologist
882	2018	Professional Engineering Technologist
586	2019	Professional Engineering Technologist

(3) There are no registration requirements for practising as an Engineer. ECSA is only required to keep a record of Registered Persons. Section 18(2) of the Engineering Profession Act, (Act No. 46 of 2000) (the EPA) prohibits by criminal sanction a person from practising in a category without being registered in that category. Section 26 (4) of the EPA allows an unregistered person to “perform identified engineering work in the service of or by order of and under the direction, control, supervision of or in association with a registered person entitled to perform the identified work and who must assume responsibility for any work so performed.’’ The legislation distinguishes between a person practising and a person performing work under the auspices or in association with a registered person. The ideal situation is that all practitioners should be registered to ensure continuous professional development (CPD) and adherence to the code of professional conduct.

(4) Currently we cannot provide figures for State-owned entities. Nevertheless, we can provide figures for the public works sector as outlined below. The Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI) has established the Professional Services Branch, which is mandated to manage technical capacity building programmes that are regarded as key enablers towards creating a pool of technical skills to build a reliable supply of professionals and skilled workers, which will address the gap that currently in the built environment for the State.

The Branch focuses on the following key objectives:

(i) To develop a plan to restore the Skills Pipeline in the Built Environment Sector targeting identified areas of skills shortages within the State;

(ii) Professionalisation of the Built Environment (including Construction and Property Management);

(iii) Building State technical capacity focusing on the built environment and infrastructure

The branch has started to operationalize by piloting a programme through the provincial Public Works departments. The intention is to upscale the programme to cover all organs of State responsible for infrastructure delivery. To this end, the Public Works Capacity Building Forum was established to identify the root causes of capacity constraints and develop capacity building strategies customized for the Public Works Family.

The figures for professionals are currently employed in in the Public Works Sector are as follows:

PUBLIC WORKS SECTOR BASELINE INFORMATION
Candidates	731
Professionals	563
Unregistered	314
Total	1608

Please refer to Annexure 1 for more details on the technical skills areas which these individuals are qualified in, disaggregated into the various provincial departments where they are employed.