It has often been raised that we should limit the supply of Engineers to the market in order to increase the remuneration levels through normal supply/demand dynamics. The ensuing debate tends to indicate that employers would then employ unqualified or untrained persons with the resultant risk of the failure of the system through poor design, operation and maintenance.

The answer must therefore lie in addressing both limitations and to converge towards a combination of necessity and sufficiency and meeting a standard of safety and reliability which effectively means a level that is decreed by adherence to the laws of science. That is a pretty good advantage we have in our profession.

SA is essentially set up for this structure via internationally accredited tertiary qualifications, a well-defined candidate training model with professionally focused assessment criteria, which will shortly be joined by the requirements of Identification of Engineering Work (IDoEW). As with any great rules and structures, they are only any use if implemented effectively by the parties concerned.

Can there be any doubt that Engineers would want to maximize the return on time and effort? As the income levels rise, more Engineers will enter the profession. But engineering, of all the professions, is 
probably the one most readily open to the "quacks" of the discipline, employing guess work, non-adherence to standards, quick fixes and obfuscations which can delude the public. Examples are rife. 

Then there is the take-over of roles that should be performed by the Engineer by bean counters and politicians and the like in matters of selection of cost effectiveness on maintenance, for one example.

This prostitution of Engineering can therefore only be contained by regulation. Thus, as we proceed from the well regulated tertiary starting point, we recognize the need for competence standards and assessment criteria for registration, followed by IDoEW in the realm of practice.

The demand then for the numbers of Engineers required will follow from the needs of society. The constant refrain on scarcity of skills would indicate that the demand still exceeds supply. This imbalance is aggravated by the social engineering effects such as BEE which frequently skew the balance of skills. If only the system would recognize the serious loss of continuum created by expelling the older experienced white Engineers. When their intellect is gone, how will the younger Engineers develop?

We may have a bit of a breakthrough on the involvement of the retired Engineers as Mentors. To encourage this, as from April 2015, the SETAs are obligated to fund the training of Candidate Engineers. 

Most of this funding is destined to pay Mentors in a structured mentorship process.

In reality, engineering remuneration is growing to hopefully compare with the other professions. Let's keep it that way. Professional recognition, upkeep of high standards and ethical conduct will raise the status of Engineers in society.

The South African economy is sick. The diagnosis has been going on for a long time, but the prescriptions have been ignored. It is evident that the body may not find the energy and perhaps the will to recover without some serious surgery. The danger of infection is greater as the invasive nature of the surgery is complex. The doctors and specialists (quacks?) may not succeed in finding a recovery routine before incapacity of the patient becomes permanent. To make matters worse, the patient is in a state hospital.

I am writing these words as the engineering based industry, having just had a serious dose of platinum deficiency syndrome, is now steeped in a viral bout of non-metal-working plague. It is going to take a patient with a very strong immune system to overcome this one. Many of the limbs that support the body may simply not survive, suffer from permanent damage and shrink into a state of paralysis.

All the machines (that are working) are monitoring the patient as follows. For clarity, the health monitor dashboard terminology has been calibrated with economic metrics.

Productivity: declining with the record showing the index has shown a reduction of 41% in the last 10 years. The meter rider position shows that the current level is the lowest in 46 years.

Employment: declining.

Unemployment: Increasing

Economic growth rate: Declining, now below 2% pa

Rand parity with world currencies: declining.  Rand: US$  1994: 3.55:1   2014:10.80:1

International Investment rating: Declining towards junk bond status

Corruption factor in government and the economy: increasing, reaching epidemic levels

Infrastructure status, education and service standards: declining

Small Medium Enterprises development rate: at best static but declining in small manufacturing.

Inflation rate: increasing

“Real” recession: evidently active and technically in stage of stagflation

Cost of living of basic items basket: rising (at alarming rate)

Centre of gravity of skilled and experienced engineering resources: moving into 50-60 age spectrum

Potential for Engineers to survive economically at retirement: declining

I do not think we need any more metrics to realize that the patient is in really big trouble.

We have been subjected to the National Development Plan for some time now with various degrees of emphasis. Government, or at least in reality the ANC, continues to use it as a manifesto item typical of political posturing presumably to convince the public (and the voters) that the country is all set to have an era of great investment, new projects, employment opportunities, export improvements, and reversal of the fiscal deficits amongst many attributes. The better life for all stuff. The alliance continues to nitpick at it and academic and research organisations find flaws in the numbers and the statistics as though it is all an exact science. It has taken on the form of a sort of hallucinating drug that one places one’s faith in when faced with the current economic reality. It all depends on what is one’s own perspective of current reality.

Engineers would be inclined to agree on the need for the NDP, the 18 Strategic Infrastructure Projects (SIPs) and the spin off from the designing, planning, constructing, commissioning, maintaining and operating of all these projects. These will use all the engineering capacity that we have, and more. Never mind from where the investment funds are to come from, that remains all smoke and mirrors and it’s hard to believe that the country will suddenly find R800 odd billion and then spend it over three years on completed projects.

Perhaps closer to the Engineer’s concern is, if we had all that money, where are we going to find the sufficient number of engineering resources to spend it (properly)? We will avoid contemplating the potential behind the corruption that is now endemically entrenched in our country with very little accountability. The efforts to ascertain the available engineering resources by the PICC/SIPs/DHET/ECSA/Volunteer committees will presumably produce some results but so far the numbers do not seem more than high level estimates. I believe it was an exercise to find out what we already knew: we have a scarce skills problem. My own evaluation is that the systems and processes used cannot measure the extent of the scarcity in a meaningful way if the time frame is that of the SIPs programme. This is an example of breaching a very fundamental engineering ethos: if you cannot measure it, you do not know much about it. Clearly, if the metrics used to measure the scarcity do not take this into account, the process while necessary, is insufficient.

The 18 SIPs projects are reasonably well defined at a high level. From this a start should be made to identify the required resources by a reasonable relationship between project size and type. The reality is however, that those who will need the resources normally specify the needs at a granular level, not a generic level that emerged from this committee. Efforts of the SAIMechE to propose a model to measure the needs, to locate as many as possible from the existing market and to focus Candidate Engineer development in those scarce areas are met with a sort of glazed, unconvinced response by the “authorities”. After all, we have to find ways to spend R800 billion effectively, but it would appear that to spend a few million on getting knowledge of the course to take to manage the scarce skills issue is considered either too expensive or unnecessary. The real reason is uncertain as the response has been nil. If the proposed model were to show a return on investment, it would only have to save about one thousandth of one percent of the programme budget to cover its cost. It’s a no-brainer when one realises the costs, delays and consequences of the scarce skills impact on projects. Take a look at Medupi and the Durban-Jhb pipeline as examples. Consider the impact on infrastructure service delivery alone.  There are legendary other cases out there that show the result of technically incapacitated owners’ teams alone.

If ever there was a time when we wanted the good news, it must be now. A time to listen to that classic hit by Crocodile Harris " Give me the good news”

If we accept the word forever
Maybe we should live together
And not be scared to watch
The late night news
You can't use guns to build a nation
A bullet never was creation

Engineering wise, SA is really in the doldrums. Can we be positive and expect that things should now get better? That, of course, only happens if people make it happen, so we can do some dreaming that we hope will turn to reality. Positive thinking helps. Consider the options:

The active start to the National Development Plan. The 18 strategic infrastructure projects actually start to happen. The talking and conferences that have consumed any energy associated with them stop and the action starts.

We get let into the secret by treasury as to how these are to funded. The engineering community is invited to participate at the highest level in the Owners’ teams, the project planning and conceptual engineering to ensure that the projects are correctly structured, engineered and managed. The politicians wake up and realise that it’s all about the built environment, and that is created by science and experience, not hollow, electoral promises based on ignorance.

Government and private business interests start to work together for the common goal of increasing the economic growth rate: what about an economic codesa? Corruption gets serious attention.

The unions and the mining industry together reach a win-win understanding and proceed to jointly add value to our massive commodity assets sitting underground that are useless unless mined and treated in a competitive manner. This in turn encourages the reluctant and unconvinced investors to consider SA as a less risky investment destination. Funds start to flow into the economy again and the current account deficit reverses back to a reasonable level. The Rand stabilizes.

Education? Well, while we are dreamimg and hoping, the training and development of teachers becomes a reality as this is the primary necessary condition for our youth to acquire the essentials of literacy and numeracy. The 30 % pass rate becomes history. Idle Funds in the skills development and Seta accounts are applied to the training of engineering resources including the funding of Mentors.

Last but not least, the government becomes convinced that cadre deployment in place of resources with skills and expertise is a disaster.

If you are willing to be part of the solution, by clicking onto http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JACJjid9WWY should provide some inspiration.

At the recent workshop held by the Department of Higher Education (DHET), the President’s Infrastructure Coordination Committee (PICC) and the Council for the Built Environment (CBE), the objective was to assess the status of the scarce skills in South Africa by assembling Occupational Teams (OTs) that would be assembled largely from the voluntary engineering organizations and academia. Two days were spent following the earlier work done by the PICC/DHET/CBE team to prepare a list of what was determined by the 18 Strategic Infrastructure Projects (SIPs) to be the scare skills for this programme. This list covered the management, professional and trades identified as such by the Organising Framework for Occupations (OFO) model.

The 18 SIPs are identified at a very high level, for example SIP1 being "Unlocking the Northern mineral belt with the Waterberg as the catalyst”. For what was alleged to be "security” reasons, not much else is published on this SIP to expand on the detail, but it can be reliably gathered that a large component will be for coal mining development to take up the supply that is dwindling in the Witbank/Middelburg area.

The projected list of scarce skills, when reviewed on the basis that it should enable some effective action to commence, is in my view a rather useless piece of data insofar as the Mechanical Engineers are concerned. It simply shows "about 500” needed at a scarcity level of "20-50%” whatever that may convey.

The SAIMechE team filled in their answers to the OT list on the wide spectrum of questions and these will then presumably be assembled and evaluated for action with all the others. Most of the questions we have been addressing for years that seem to do no more than lead to the next conference or workshop. One simply comes away with the feeling of perpetual talk and no perceived action.

The first concern the team had was that the workshop called for voluntary conveners to fill variety of time consuming roles, and this just seemed to illustrate a poor business model. Here we have the National Development Programme (NDP) with its first 18 projects worth hundreds of billions of Rand in total installed value (TIV) that has no funds to pay for a properly structured resource development team that would comprise a fraction of a percent of the TIV cost. It simply illustrates the importance given to this role in the success of the programme. There is no contracted leverage with voluntary teams.

The SAIMechE team made three constructive, actionable suggestions. Firstly, establish a top level professional resources team who would be paid to get the scarce skills issue measured and solutions developed, and which would be in a position to advise the SIPs owner’s teams on the appropriate resources required at owner’s level that could be seconded from the profession in a similar way that the accounting profession does for state bodies.

Secondly, develop a model for evaluating availability of scarce skills to identify the scarce resource with the relevant, engineering specific attributes. It is based on the Engineer’s credo that you do not know much about anything until you can define and measure it. Scarcity needs to have two references to be measureable: what you have and what you need. Accordingly SAIMechE could offer to facilitate working with professional engineering resource recruiting bodies to create a large and well configured, best-in-class, dynamic database of engineering resources for these and other South African projects. By simply stating that we need a number of Mechanical Engineers does not resolve the issue. The only time the real scarcity is known is when the employer specifies the need at granular level of definition. For example one can search on Mechanical Engineers and get hundreds, but then ask for those with the specifics such as 10 years of coal plant processing experience or conveyor and coal chute design, one may be lucky to find a few if any under today’s dwindling expertise that largely exists in near retirement age groups or who may have emigrated.

Thirdly, with this information and working with the employers undertaking the projects and who issue the job specifications with these details, we can identify those who should be taking on the Candidate Engineers that wish to do their training under the SAIMechE Professional Development Programme. SAIMechE would be the paid conduit to provide information on scarce skills to the PICC or the CBE on an on-going basis enabled by the dynamics of the model. We need to ensure that the expectation of perpetual voluntary work by professionals is not presumed. It’s a business reality to pay for value. It would it addition be of value to be able to second experts from the Membership, exploiting the immense, collective intellectual capital of the Institution and effectively meeting the essence of the mission statement.

It is hard to comprehend that our once successful and world class power utility is now in such a parlous state of diminished competence. The engineering professions have since 1992 warned that, if the government believes in its economic growth projections based on GEAR and ASGISA, then as with any power utility that depends for base load on the 6 pack fossil or two reactor nuclear plant configurations, then start building them without further delay, and to stop kidding themselves that private power interests would want to get involved with investing here on the returns available with the (admirable) historically low unit cost of Eskom’s supply.

Aside from now facing the reality of a major national economic driver failure and the frustrations and anger of business and citizens, Eskom will have to face up to the formidable task of recreating the lost institutional memory and capital in the form of experienced engineering resources to manage both the capital programme and the maintenance of a very stretched system. My own observations and interaction with Eskom, commencing some four years ago on the efforts to provide resource input to the Capital Development Department have been nothing but amazing in the naivety and misplaced belief then that all new Engineers would need to be black females! The affirmative action obsession will come back and bite them big time. Eskom now faces the additional challenge of global demand for good and experienced power engineering resources. In a hysteresis-correcting like manner, they will have to bend back dramatically to reverse their losses, as their mistaken belief that training is going to solve this one should not fool the public. We all know how long it takes to mould a useful, productive, experienced Engineer.

Overall the blame for being politically naïve and failure to heed the advice of experts must lie with the government and the Minister of Public Enterprises. It is hard to believe that those tasked with the responsibility for energy management fell into the realm of unconscious incompetence ie they did not know that they did not know, as the warning bells were loud and clear long ago. I recall Ian Macrae, a past CEO of Eskom, stating "if you stop Eskom growing, you stop the economy growing” How true this is going to be. What must international investors now think about SA as an investment option? Load shedding, rationed power, inadequate skills to recover, the possibility of skills actually depleting further…..and worse, it seems not much convincing light at the end of the tunnel. It is now time that the government and Eskom paid some attention to the significant collective expertise that exists out in the community in the form of retrenched and retired white Engineers who have earned their T shirts in the power industry. Eskom’s current constraint to recover throughput as an active power generating asset will be the supply and retention of skills. It will take some inventive strategy to get that act together but until I see some real serious concern to realize this, then the consumer is going to add desperation to the frustration that power rationing, higher tariffs and unforeseen outages are the future for a long time. Below are some of the statements from the Eskom annual report which I include for a bit of light, masochistic reading:

"Eskom was recognised as a utility of global stature in 2001 when it received the Financial Times award for the Global Power Company of the Year.

Power outages in 2006 and 2007 have brought into sharp focus the vulnerability of the power system. Several factors came into play – higher than expected demand, unplanned outages, and more importantly, a diminishing reserve capacity. In recent years the reserve margin for generation capacity has shrunk to between 8% and 10%. We aspire to a reserve margin of 15%.

As the provider of 95% of South Africa’s electricity, our contribution may be the most fundamental of all in supporting economic growth in South Africa – another reason for the exhilaration and heightened sense of mission that have characterised Eskom’s activities over the past year”.

Missing conclusion: We ran out of power because, together with government, we were not competent or experienced enough to plan and manage the energy system of the country. Our exhilaration may be short lived, as the disillusioned consumer must now pick up the tab for our actions.

Just in case the reader did not notice, this is a word for word repeat of the SA Mechanical Engineer leader article of January 2008. The more they stay the same….

The phone rang. "Hallo, Professional Engineer here. May I help you?” The voice on the other end sounded a bit desperate. "I am JZ, the CEO of a company called RSA Ltd and I am here with my Financial Director PG and my Operations Director TM” We are enquiring whether you would be in a position to visit our works and give us some advice. Our main production unit called the Economy Machine is giving a lot of trouble”. "I’ll be right over” said Engineer.

In the debriefing meeting, Engineer enquired as to the purpose of the machine, the units of production and the throughout rate. "The machine is meant to produce a product called a GDP. We set it up to meet the needs of a market of about 50 million users, and to increase its annual output by 7%. No matter what we do it hardly meets even half of the user market, and is now only increasing by about 2% per year, and is absorbing most of our capital. You can see it needs some fixing, and up to now we have not used any Engineers, only our usual consultants. We think it may be time to consider the views of an Engineer.

Professional Engineer was then permitted to inspect the machine, test various components, take readings and then produce his report, having addressed this complex problem in accordance with the Exit Level Outcomes of the Engineer’s competency criteria. The essential elements of the findings were as follows.

1. The main problem is that the machine has three major functions that are all working against each other, thus stifling GDP at the material mixing stage. The three parts driving these functions are the Free Market Economy device, the SACP device and the COSATU device. Each is directing the raw material into different processes.
   
   
2. There are a large number of components fitted that are not up to the designers’ standards. We have listed many that were selected and fitted based on the coloured boxes that come from the favoured suppliers, and not from those meeting the working requirements in the specifications.
   
   
3. A lot of the raw material feedstock and many of the essential parts and correct spares for the machine have allegedly been removed from the factory, and are unaccounted for in the materials audit we did. It appears no action is ever taken to rectify this.The electrical power to the machine has frequent trips. Switchboard distribution components such as breakers are reset, a dangerous procedure, and no maintenance records are evident on any of the equipment. Much of it has been left in a dysfunctional state. Reviewing the costing records, the energy input price and labour costs have escalated alarmingly and well over the market inflation rate, and productivity of a GDP unit per worker has fallen by 40% over the last 10 years.
   
   
4. We reviewed the company’s annual report to attempt to glean some earlier financial and production records, and noted that the auditors have qualified their audit report every year since 2000.
   
   
5. We noticed that many of the factory workers were not busy, and in enquiring from HR, we were told that the cost of dismissing them is very high and that HR spend most of their time at the CCMA putting the company’s case against workers who have clearly failed to perform. In fact, while writing this report, the machine was stopped and the workers were out on strike apparently demanding a 60% wage increase, free housing, free medical aid and shorter working hours.
   
   
6. We reviewed the qualifications of all employees to evaluate suitability for the operation of a high technology production business and we noted that none of the Directors and Senior Managers has any technical qualifications or experience in GDP production.

Our report accordingly recommends a complete change of management, recruiting and training the appropriately qualified staff, removal of the functions of the SACP and COSATU devices, disposal of all the pirate parts used from the coloured boxes, re-order of the specified parts, the overhaul of the electrical systems, and the immediate introduction of a hire-and-fire labour policy. Without such measures, the machine and the factory will have to close down, with the accompanied non-production of GDP and the increase in unemployed workers. The shareholders need to act to replace the Directors at the next AGM.

The Editor mentioned to me the other day that she should issue a health warning with some of my leader articles because they often create an acute case of depression. This will in future be issued with the articles as it is becoming increasingly difficult to construct positive and encouraging articles about the state of the nation and the environment in which engineering has to play its role.

Last month we took a look at the status of the mining industry and one could not do much more than be pretty negative about the trend it has taken over recent years. From being top spot so to speak for decades, we have slumped to a mediocre level that replicates a number of other circumstances in our country. And the bell tolled loud and clear this week when 4 major employers in the EPCM industry advised that they were about to institute section 189 retrenchment programmes. They inevitably become the victims of the lack of new mining spend which in turn does not happen because the investors in such business have made it clear that other countries are able to offer a less risky investment climate. Most of the analyst commentary on the issue has confirmed this view. It is just appalling and almost treasonable that those in government allowed the talk about nationalization to go so far without taking a firm hand, ably assisted by incoherent mining policy.

It only goes to show that in such matters of global economics and investor confidence that they do not know. And worse is that they do not know that they do not know. It had little to do with the Euro crisis which gets blamed for everything including lack of local service delivery. Don’t mention the State of the Nation address because I will then need the advice of the intended health warning.

On the matter of power, we note with some relief that NERSA saw fit to refute giving Eskom the 16% escalation over the next five years, which on top of the increases over the last three would have been catastrophic for industry, business and the average citizen. Even the 8% is severe enough which means a doubling of the price of electricity in less than 9 years, and it does not include the mark-up that most municipalities will add on before charging the consumer.

It causes one to reflect on what has happened to Eskom, and whilst it gets the blame for such drastic price increases, it is really government policy that caused the whole crisis. To have left the power capitalization industry to virtually collapse from 1994 to 2007 was the collective decision of policy makers who again demonstrated that they did not know that they did not know. In that period Eskom became a cash-cow for government. It also became a show piece of transformation where most of the established intellectual capital and memory was methodically removed to satisfy a political whim. It became evident that political identity was more important than experienced engineering and project management skills that had been built up over decades of designing and building the best six pack stations in the world.

The effective owner’s team had been removed and replaced with the outsourcing to foreign based project houses. Costs escalated and are exhibited in the horrific escalation on the price of Medupi for example. Where was the sinking fund to finance the new station build? It became necessary to charge the current consumers to fund the capital expansion. Therein lies your 16% requirement. Whatever Eskom may say to the contrary, it is borne out by the current nightmare that personifies our electrical energy generation and distribution structures. Absolute power has certainly disrupted the economy and will do so for the foreseeable future. How do we reverse the slide to uncompetitive input costs?

I guess we have to criticize the laws of the universe, those annoying and inviolate laws of science and the basic engineering fundamentals for not taking account of the inability of those "leading” the functions of the built environment development and essential skills training in South Africa to achieve the standards required to meet these laws. Why uphold compliance with nature’s laws when it is much easier to change the need for them by a politically driven relaxation? It is clearly far easier to decide to set regulations for practitioners and contractors to use the surplus numbers of unqualified persons to be awarded government contracts for purposes of building the infrastructure.

After all, with this policy and approach we can meet the necessary political targets which seem to be far more important than ensuring compliance with structural, life-cycle and safety standards that have evolved over decades of proven engineering practice. We must learn to be satisfied with our new-found decrees from those that rule, and we can even indulge in some self-praise when we comment "……that bridge was nearly strong enough……… we were quite close really”.

So, in keeping with the above aspiration to continue our acceptance of adjusted standards and drive for the common denominator leading to "a better life for all”, the Minister, ably assisted by the cidb, has recently decreed the following”

"The key amendments include the removal of the requirement for contractors to have registered professionals in their permanent employ; this is to be removed as it is not viable to have such professionals in a contractor’s full-time employ". "The requirement for the Registered Professional is therefore being moved from a contractor registration requirement to a contract management requirement as a condition of contract”.

Essentially, the roles of the Professional Engineer, Technologist and Technician will now effectively be subservient to that of the registered Construction Manager on matters where professional engineering judgment is required. I guess with the comedy of the self-inflicted war games that have been played out between ECSA and the CBE over the important subject of Identification of Engineering Work (IDoEW), not much more could have been expected. Those unregistered Engineers or at least those practicing as such can continue to act without any fear of liability as the rules that govern registration, ethics and safe practice do not apply to them. The IDoEW deliberations commenced in 2006. It’s now 2013 and we are still counting. The profession has messed about arguing while we witness a steady entropic decline in the built environment.

On the topic of training of young Engineers in industry, I thought I would recall some gems that arose in 2012 whilst endeavouring to persuade certain employers to consider taking on basically good candidates and provide some development and experience to assist feeding talent into the skills pool.

"We do not have the time, the money or the systems to train anyone. Just find us a qualified and experienced Engineer. We need a PDI between 30 and 35, with 15 years experience as an Engineering Manager”. (Allowed cost to company will remain undisclosed here to protect the guilty.)

"We do not have time to train or develop anyone into this specialized role. Please find us fully qualified candidates who can hit the ground running”. No acceptable candidates have emerged to date.

Cyril Ramaphosa has confirmed that the ANC policy is to spend R845 billion on infrastructure in the next 3 years. I found that his recent TV interview conveyed blind optimism and was most unconvincing. I can only assume that he does not know that he does not know what is needed to do that properly. Professional government and provincial owners’ teams and supply contractor capacity appear not to feature in his model.

Anyone who cares about developing professional engineering skills should be made aware of the new candidate training curriculum that will be instituted by ECSA and the Voluntary Engineering Associations in April 2013. It identifies the exit level outcomes that define the professional and will be the fastest and most effective route to competence and registration that can be envisaged.

In June last year, the commission released a diagnostic document which stated that the elimination of poverty and the reduction of inequality were the objectives of a long term plan, but that nine key challenges stood in the way. Let’s call these the Undesirable Effects or UDEs for short.

• Too few people work.
• The quality of school education for black people is poor.
• Infrastructure is poorly located, inadequate and under-maintained.
• Spatial divides hobble inclusive development.
• The economy is unsustainably resource intensive.
• The public health system cannot meet demand or sustain quality.
• Public services are uneven and often of poor quality.
• Corruption levels are high.
• South Africa remains a divided society.

Then, in November, the commission produced a draft National Development Plan for 2030. It contained recommendations covering the following areas. Let’s call these the Desirable Effects or DEs for short. We can see that these are in effect the inverts of the UDEs, and hence become objectives or what we will classify as ambitious targets.

• Create jobs
• Education and training
• Expand infrastructure
• Transform urban and rural spaces
• Transition to a low carbon economy
• Provide health care
• Build a capable state
• Fight corruption
• Transformation and unity

Then comes the following, almost casual assumption: South Africa can become the country we want it to become. It is possible to get rid of poverty and reduce inequality in 20 years. We have the people, the goodwill, the skills, the resources – and now, a plan.

Assuming that the ANC finds the time at their Mangaung conference to review and approve the plan, then the 20 year implementation process has to actually start. The ANC has never shown any glory in action and implementation to follow their renowned rhetoric, so herein lies the test to see whether the assumption made by the plan is more than the usual innuendo.

Let’s take a reality check on the proposed elements of the plan. We can approach this with a mindset that has evolved from a fairly long exposure and many practical applications of the theory of constraints, commonly abbreviated to TOC. It is evident that this NDP challenge is a case of aspiring to a number of ambitious targets that not only require the full dependence on their specific necessary and sufficient conditions, but that such conditions can exist without any mutual conflicts. The practice of using the strategic and tactical mechanisms of the ambitious target process makes the assumption that the target is achievable and is approached in a confident frame of mind rather than one of disbelieving scepticism, which understandably, most commentary on the NDP has generated so far. Intuitively, the NDP is doomed to failure primarily as a result of an historical lack of effective management execution in SA. Any amount of political innuendo will not overcome that reality. What we can only hope for is that the government, as the sponsors so to speak of the plan, will draw on the intelligence, skills, experience and proven competence of available resources to set up, design, articulate, prescribe and monitor the plans making up what we should in fact call a programme, as it

will be a collection of interactive and dependent projects each requiring skilled planning and management execution. The best must be used, not the most politically favoured.

There is one very fundamental factor that will render this programme so challenging that it should convince us of the need for the most radical, urgent, collective effort. I will simply call it the Rule of exponential projections. It is evident in reviewing the listed DEs that every one of them is essentially population growth rate dependent. From 2000 to 2011 the Mundi index shows that the growth has been 12,8% in net gain of population numbers, or an annualised rate of 1,2%. This moderately low (recent) increase in the population was due to the escalation in HIV/Aids driven deaths. How this will change in the next 20 years is an unknown, but it could increase if the treatment measures are effective. 30% of the current population is 14 years old or less and all reaching the job market age in this period. There are an estimated 4,7m unemployed persons in the employment spectrum at present, so a rough projection shows that we need to create about 4.7 m, plus those jobs to employ the 14 year olds, plus the result of the population growth over this period. In my maths, the NPC vision to create 11 m jobs (see the plan) over the next 20 years means we shall have more unemployed in numbers than we have at present. So the elimination of unemployment and hence poverty would appear to be a pipedream and we question whether it has taken exponential growth into account.

Clearly economic growth is required to create these jobs and it has to occur at a higher exponential rate that of the population needing employment. How does one converge these two lines? We either limit the growth rate of the independent variable (population) or radically increase the dependent variable (economic growth rate). If not, the lines diverge and the problem becomes greater. Many goals are missed due to the prevalence of linear thinking.

The ability to provide the management execution to all these components of the programme requires skilled and experienced resources (primarily technical: Engineers, Technologists and Technicians) to be available at the right level and numbers to implement the projects: infrastructure for example requires that the reinvestment into the assets of the infrastructure must equal the rate of depreciation just to remain static. Again we will find that the curves diverge if we cannot reverse the current trend in historical deterioration of these assets without replacement. The infrastructure is currently in a state of serious entropic decline with little evidence of major projects in the pipeline.

If the growth rate of urbanisation which is a major factor in overload and breakdown of infrastructure exceeds the rate of infrastructure growth by only 3,5% per annum, the magnitude of collapsed and underserviced urban population with all its attendant troubles will double in 20 years.

What are the simple fundamentals that must be followed in the big plan or programme? Firstly, identify the goal of each ambitious target of the programme, identify the constraints, subordinate to them, elevate them and keep following this process ensuring that interim pre-defined milestones are being met. Prioritise what will drive the throughput to meet the goal. Do what should be done and do not do what should not be done. Do not waste resources and time, for example changing town and road names, when the resources should be used to manage the required activities to achieve the programme objectives. Utilise the best available management and capacity to execute the processes.

South Africa has a major constraint in the numbers of productive resources that it can apply to this pending challenge. Unless some sense is brought into the skills space alone that reverses the current trend to enforce misplaced affirmative action, uses the experienced skilled (and ageing) work force, raises compliance levels for entrance to learning institutions, discontinues the employment of political appointees into roles instead of competent persons selected on merit, reviews the negative impact of the labour laws, formulates effective policy on small business development, and identifies measurable, interim milestones over the next twenty years, then I have to say that the great plan will fail on the basis that reality is again being replaced with political imperatives that make the appeal of the planning commission to the public to join forces "to make miracles” nothing more than hollow rhetoric we have come so used to hearing. And the exponential rule waits for no one.