SA Affordable Housing March / April 2017 // Issue: 63 | Page 30

FEATURES
Measures are being taken by government to make the building industry attractive to the youth . Image : leadingarchitecture . co . za
The strong focus of the Expanded Public Works Programme ( EPWP ) on labour intensive construction also places additional demand for qualified supervisors and managers .
In a report to address the skills shortage , the Department of Public works says that skills development has always lagged behind increases in construction spend due to graduating rates in construction and engineering . “ The current growth phase requires substantive interventions involving a wide range of stakeholders , because the current growth in infrastructure investment has come on the back of lows in the industry that have not been experienced for decades ; labour practices of the past decade have resulted in fundamental structural changes favouring labour brokering , resulting in declining investments in skills development ; and there have been fundamental changes , and breakdowns , in the skills-supply pipeline ,” the report says .
From a demand perspective , the Construction Industry Development Board ( cidb ) first investigated the likely level of infrastructure investment , from which it concluded that the growth in infrastructure investments is likely to be around 10 % to 15 % a year over the next five years .
The investigation then assessed the skills requirements of different project types , including building , minerals processing , bulk earthworks , roads and stormwater and water and sanitation . It applied these profiles to understand the skills demands in the building and civil engineering sectors and indicated that , if demand in these sectors were to reach a projected 10 % growth rate over a five-year period , the following demand for skills was obtained : for key management , supervisory and engineering personnel : less than 200 in most categories over a five-year period ; while for key artisans ; between two to three thousand in the most populous categories over a five-year period .
SHORT AND MEDIUM TERM CHALLENGES
Challenges relating to the skills pipeline cut across the education , training and workplace arenas . The problem is not merely to equip new entrants with skills , but to ensure that they gain the appropriate workplace experience to consolidate their craftsmanship , supervisory and professional capabilities . A further challenge is the predominance of an aging skills population which needs to be replaced without compromising quality and performance .
Addressing the skills pipeline will require significant changes in the current system of education and training to ensure that graduates ( whether artisans , technicians or technologists ) are able to meet world-class standards of performance .
In the short term , a number of immediate challenges exist in the sourcing of particular expertise to ensure that infrastructure projects , and in particular certain megaprojects ( primarily in the public corporation sector ), are rolled out as planned .
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MARCH - APRIL 2017
AFFORDABLE
SA HOUSING