IMESA
PRESIDENT’S COMMENT
EXCELLENCE shapes
the future
B
eing a member of IMESA makes you a willing and welcome par ticipant in this endeavour. Backed by IMESA’s training programmes and mentorship initiatives, this empowers us to maintain and grow professional engineering excellence at local government level. This is where we can create a real difference in terms of micro and macro development; however, that depends on executing the right solutions within approved budget allocations. The right decisions can only be made by experts with proven years of applied experience. This is where our pool of IMESA specialists provides an excellent sounding board for public and private sector stakeholders. Where they need input on what works best from a design and technology perspective, we have invaluable input to share on past and current infrastructure projects. This input is especially important for South Africa’s infrastructure-led economic recovery.
Achieving the right outcomes To achieve the right outcomes as engineers, we need to take a stand against key issues that have downstream negative impacts. These include tender irregularities, conflicts of interest, the misuse of resources, technical incompetence, poor quality control, inadequate project and programme management, and failure to understand and/or work within prescribed legislation. As they say, ignorance of the law is not a defence, and deliberately breaking the rules is a clear offence. The start and end point for all municipal projects must be governed by an ethical
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IMIESA February 2021
code that all engineers and officials adhere to. This will help to ensure that best practice standards are followed in every case. Essentially, ethics establish the framework for execution. And working within an ethical environment encourages the sharing of information, as well as independent and objective peer review processes. Of course, an overriding factor is an enabling environment at local government level. That’s the key to success, which includes having a coherent and practical policy framework to work with. In South Africa’s case, many feel that municipal legislation is too complex to apply practically. Either way, the crucial issue is to ensure that any red tape that hampers service delivery is removed.
In all we do, our actions define who we are, as well as our underlying value systems. As municipal engineers, we have an added responsibility because our outcomes in terms of infrastructure service delivery are integral to the socio-economic success or failure of the towns and cities in which we operate.
Supply chain gains Alongside and in support of optimal project delivery, IMESA’s mandate is to engage with public sector stakeholders that include Cogta, the Construction Industry Development Board and National Treasury on ways to improve procurement and tender processes. Among the anticipated results after a recent IMESA online workshop are pending changes in legislation that, once passed, will positively improve municipal engineering performance on smaller contracts. The proposal calls for increases of the threshold on the procurement of goods and services by way of formal written quotations. If approved, these limits will be set at R750 000 for metros and R300 000 for local municipalities. While this still needs to be processed into the Municipal Finance Management Act (No. 56 of 2003) and supply chain management procedures, it’s a positive development for engineers on the ground to help them do their jobs more effectively.
Bhavna Soni, president, IMESA
