Two Sides of a Coin Presentation to Road Pavement Forum on Work Force Development Issues A Challenge

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Two Sides of a Coin!Presentation to Road
Pavement Forum on Work Force Development Issues
A Challenges for the Construction Industry

• Fred Hugo
• SA Academy of Engineering
• 2006

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ITT - University of Stellenbosch South Africa
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Question Where have the following statements
been made?

• Several initiatives have led to the conclusion
  that workforce is a critical issue to all related
  organizations public, private, and academic.
• workforce shortages are of significant
  proportions!

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Answer.. Debate on Trends in Transportation in
the USA!

• Other observations from that debate..
• Rising level in education
• More are returning to education
• Increase in female, minority and immigration
  hirings
• There has been a demand for skills increase for
  several decades
• Public sector has become less popular ----old
  fashioned, rigid and less innovative
• Gaps in wages between school leavers and college
  graduates increasing
• Transportation is in-grown

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More observations... Debate on Trends in USA!

• Four year degree in CE is inadequate !
• 115 PhDs in CE /y is inadequate!
• Private sector is now doing its own training
• Successful organizations are those that ID HR as
  a strategic management function
• Partnerships that will work have to be identified
• Contracting out (outsourcing) is increasing
  but.need for technical skills has not been
  reduced since management is needed!
• Centres of Excellence in Transportation have
  increased from the initial 10 in early nineties
  to more than 60 in 2006

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More observations... Debate on Trends in Work
Force Development in South Africa!

• There has been a demand for skills increase for
  several years in South Africa and the SETA
  system has been in place for several years but
  the results have not been forthcoming
• Six weeks ago SEIFSA reported that Dept of
  Labour declined a request for financial support
  of R50 mil for its efforts to train 3200 scarce
  artisans because proper procedures had not been
  followed..
• Despite fact that there has been a surplus of R3
  000 mil in the national skills development fund
  for several years ..Die Burger 9 Oct 2006 and
• shortage was identified as a necessity in the
  training initiative of JIPSA

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Observations... Debate on Trends in Work Force
Development in South Africa!

• Technology is defining our future
• Educated labour force is needed
• Need to be able to interpret and manage data
• Account needs to be taken of different learning
  styles
• Need to understand and manage career mobility in
  the new era of globalisation

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Observations... Debate on Trends in Work Force
Development in South Africa!

• Do we have the management staff with the
  necessary skills to manage the future expansion
  in the built environment?
• UP estimates that we produce only 10 000
  students/yith symbols between A C in higher
  grade Maths Science. Dept of Educ intends
  growing this to 50 000 by 2008!

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Observations... Debate on Trends in Work Force
Development in South Africa!

• Dramatic increase in the enrolments in Civil
  Engineering in South Africa eg. Stellenbosch ..gt
  twice between 2004 and 2007!
• The aim is to increase engineering graduates by
  1000 per year by 2010 as will be seen later
• The problem is that it will take at least four
  years before they graduate!!

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Observations from other SAAE Fellows... Carl
Grim in his keynote address during at an
induction function of new members of the South
African Academy of Engineer 4 September 2006 in
Johannesburg Roy Marcus SAAE Exco member
interacting with JIPSA
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THE TECHNICAL SKILLS CRISIS

• UPDATE ON STATUS OF THE JIPSA INVESTIGATIONS AND
  RECOMMENDATIONS
• Roy Marcus - SAAE Exco

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FIRST PHASE

• Focus on technical skills shortages
• Assessment of needs of various industry sectors
• Attempt to gain some consensus of technical
  skills requirements
• Concern over discrepancies particularly in the
  construction industry where there are large
  differences of opinions
• Attempt to derive a model for the ratios of the
  various categories engineers technicians/technol
  ogists, artisans
• Shock over realisation that average age of
  artisans is 56 years
• Deep concern over apparent failure of learnership
  system the quality of the end product simply
  inadequate!!
• Initial agreement to focus on engineers and
  artisans

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THE HARSH REALITIES

• The Supply Side Pitifully low numbers of
  matriculants who qualify for admission to
  tertiary technical training operations (maths and
  science).
• The Teacher Quality Problems Quality of science
  and mathematics teachers at secondary school
  level.
• The Bulge of Retirements Bulge of retirements of
  senior top class scientists and engineering
  academics at tertiary educational institutions -
  little prospect of filling the voids with a new
  crop of young highly qualified people.
• Career as an Academic The reality of the fact is
  that there is a paucity of black science
  graduates and that within this small group very
  few see a future in the world of academia.
• Confusing Roles there is a serious problem in
  education and training being separated between
  DoE and DoL.

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THE HARSH REALITIES

• Tertiary HDIs the Poor Cousins In spite of the
  restructuring process Previously Historically
  Disadvantaged Tertiary Education Institutions
  (HDI) are destined to remain the poor cousins of
  the system.
• Unemployable Graduates There are a large number
  of graduates who have graduated with excellent
  gradings, but because their grounding does not
  include technical subjects, are simply
  unemployable. (Between 30 000 60 000)
• The Untapped Talent Within the shop floor
  environment there are literally thousands of
  people who have acquired technical competencies
  through a process of osmosis and who if given
  an opportunity could become the future technical
  leaders in the country.
• Migration of Skills Urban drift is a serious
  problem to rural development

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THE HARSH REALITIES

• Stigmatization and the Anti Technology Mindset
  Negative mindset amongst the youth of South
  Africa that following a career as artisan is
  below their dignity.
• The Failure of an Inflexible Educational System
  The articulation within the technical training
  environment is virtually non-existent. Inability
  to fully integrate the offerings from FET
  colleges, Universities of Technology and
  Universities into a flexible modular outcomes
  based model is seen to be nothing short of
  scandalous.
• Anti Feminine Culture Still a strong
  anti-feminine culture within technical
  environment. Unlike Eastern Europe, SA clings to
  an outmoded mind-set in which women are not seen
  as an integral part of the technical team.
• Under-utilised Facilities There are a large
  number of technical training centres grossly
  under-utilised.
• Turf War home of professional councils
• Pool of Retired Specialists many skilled people
  are excluded from the workplace due to quotas

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THE HARSH REALITIES

• Outmoded Training Techniques and Facilities
  Technical training programmes in South Africa
  have failed to adapt to modern training
  processes, and in many cases the trainers
  themselves have not upgraded their skills. As
  such, the training centres are simply unable to
  attract people into the environment.
• Outmoded Trainers Many of the training personnel
  are imbued with outdated mindsets and are
  certainly very uninspiring.
• Lack of Resource Planning The role of the HR
  executive.
• Flight of the White Skills The whole world is
  short of technical, managerial and project
  management skills.
• HIV AIDS This is hardly mentioned in our
  observations
• Salary Discrepancy impossible to attract
  people into academia
• Funding Formula - huge mismatch engineering
  faculties are severely disadvantaged
• Contract Employment chief executives are on 5
  year contracts bonus system mitigates against
  development of human resources

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The numbers challenge
Human Resources in the Construction Sector
Source Allyson Lawless
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A highly segmented industry
Number of companies per size category
Employees
Source Allyson Lawless
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Technical skills in Local Municipalities
Source Allyson Lawless
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Technical skills in Districts
Source Allyson Lawless
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Artisans Building Industry
Source BITB
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The numbers challenge All artisans
Source COTT
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Artisan Ages
Source CIDB
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Strategic Objectives of the National Strategy
for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education

• 1. Performance targets in all schools
• 2. In every classroom a qualified and competent
  teacher
• 3. Improving the language of teaching and
  learning (LOLT)
• Identifying and nurturing talent and potential
• Co-operation with the Department of Science and
  Technology - NSW, camps, etc.
• 6. Partnerships with relevant stakeholders -
  resources and technical support
• 7. Evaluation and monitoring of MST in provinces
  

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Goals of the Expanded MST Strategy

• Increase number of learners passing HG
  mathematics and science
• Increase number of Dinaledi schools - dedicated
  Mathematics and Science schools
• Provide basic package of support to Dinaledi
  schools
• Monitor and report on progress on bi-annual basis

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Numbers passing 2004 and 2005
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Performance Targets
50 000
40 000
33 500
Physical Science
28 000
Mathematics
24000
Are we going to meet the targets set?
Do we have the enrolment to deliver?
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CURRENT STATUS

• Agreement on increase of output from universities
  on engineering graduates to an additional 1000
  per year
• Waiting on universities to come back with
  proposal on how to achieve these goals
• Suggested ratio for South Africa Engineer
  Technologist/TechnicianArtisan 1516
• Plan to develop 50 000 artisans over the next 10
  years in an advanced stage
• Plan will include budgetary requirements
• Concerted effort to create linkages between all
  initiatives
• TRAC-SA programme good example..

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CURRENT STATUS (cont)

• TRAC-SA science and maths school programme
  expanding very strongly with
• Four regional centres,
• mobile laboratory units gtgt1-10 3 are full- time
  7 _at_centre,
• 12 mini centres and 56 schools,
• interactive science centres www.trac.sunac.za
• 44 000 learners exposed to maths and science
• 1000 teachers trained,

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Legislative environment

• More than 120 pieces of legislation currently
  regulate the industry
• Policies are often uncoordinated between five
  national Government departments, provincial roads
  and works departments and engineering departments
  in local authorities
• Government departments unable to spend budgets
• Large contracts often split into a number of
  small contracts

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Technical personnel required to deliver existing
tasks

• Public sector
• Number of civil engineers in local Government
  (including technologists and technicians)

• Local government
• Vacancies 800-1200 about 1550 employed
• Provincial government
• Central government
• Parastatals
• Vacancies 500
• about 1500 employed

Source Allyson Lawless
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Perhaps you will now understand why we observed
Two Sides of a Coin in the current state of
affairs in the Work Force!

• The problem is that one side yields a win and..
  the other a loose!!
• Will this situation prevail or will we lift
  ourselves by the bootstraps?...Then we need to do
  what needs to be done in order to be ..
• An industry that unites our nation and leaves a
  legacy of which we can all be justly proud