I decided for some masochistic reason to take a look at the National scarce skills list - top 100 

occupations in demand that was gazetted for public comment on 24 April 2014. There was considerable energy spent at the time (from 2012) during which this list was compiled involving various voluntary groups assembling at workshops to find a sensible way to construct such a list. After many meetings and refinements, the documents were submitted to the Minister who promptly asked for comment from the persons who had compiled the report! That seemed pretty pointless as the onus was then on the Ministry and the DHET to come forth with suggested solutions to enable the recommendations of the report to be implemented. Predictably, it lies in limbo, no doubt gathering dust with all the other reports that have been the result of studious research and plain hard work.

According to the SONA in 2012, the President announced that over the next three years SA would spend R840 billion on the 18 SIPs projects making up much of the early part of the National Development Plan (2010-2030). Well, fast forward from 2012 to 2016. Any signs of progress? At the time they were announced we asked what metrics are to be used to measure the progress of projects against the plan.

Clearly we seem not need them as it is intuitively evident that not much has happened. More recently the Phakisa maritime development programme was announced and so far, looking at the planned deliverables, not much is evident there either.

What is it that drives this national characteristic to have endless indabas, conferences, issuance of plans, green, white and all colours of papers that results in nothing actually being actioned? The Durban to Gauteng pipeline is years overdue and has escalated from an initial cost of R9 billion to R23 billion, and nowhere near complete. Look at Medupi and Kusile - enough said.

There seems to be one apparent factor that pervades all these projects as well as countless late or failed municipal and provincial projects : the quality of the Owner’s team. If the Owner’s team is deficient, one can rest assured that the project will be a failure.

If we consider the renewables projects, they seem to have generally been successful. However, the

technologies have been developed overseas and proven in similar environmental circumstances. They are essentially procure and construct, hardly placing much load on the local management knowledge and initiative.

With the current expectation of a nuclear development with generation 3 reactors do we really think we can produce any better results than our national projects are achieving now? Concern over the impact of corruption on this programme is real based on the endemic status that corruption has acquired in this country on so many big cap projects.

Our gazetted scarce skills top 100 list covers about every engineering discipline we have. It is fascinating that the Ministry has targeted "30,000 additional Engineers by 2014”. The list is still stuck in a 2014 time warp as no further dated actions are evident following its publication for comment.