CBE announces initiatives to drive transformation

Transformation in the built environment has
progressed more slowly than in other sectors, such as the financial sector,
with only 26% of all registered built environment professionals
being previously disadvantaged individuals and only 0.3% of all registered
professionals being women, Council for the Built Environment (CBE) CEO Priscilla Mdlalose pointed out in her address  onThursday at CBE’s second yearly
Transformation Indaba.

The CBE’s analysis of built environment professional
candidacy, however, indicates that the majority of participants are from
previously disadvantaged groups and that women candidates now make up 35% of
all candidate built environment professionals,
raising hope that transformation will grow at a faster pace in future.

Mdlalose said: “To enhance transformation
interventions, we need an industry-wide strategy that uses a skills development
process, such as the CBE Skills Pipeline, for
sustainability in the industry, to ensure that quality is not compromised with
built environment advancements
and projects to fix
historical imbalances.”

Mdlalose said in-depth consultations with
stakeholders is critical, as well as partnerships between the public and
private sector and society.

The CBE wants to establish an
institution with oversight of transformation initiatives and to advance human
resource development from primary school to professional status, using
programmes and awareness creation around subjects required to ultimately enter
the built environment professionally.

It also wants to drive a structured candidacy
programme, establish sustainable funding
for bursaries and design a sector-wide
monitoring mechanism that the aforementioned oversight institution will use.

“The success of the CBE’s efforts depends on the
buy-in from public and private sector stakeholders, the successful
establishment of a fund to sustain transformation initiatives, positive
participation from stakeholders in the education and training value
chain, and the willingness of private sector to fund key programmes and commit
to workplace training of
candidate professionals,” noted Mdlalose.

Turner and Townsend associate director, CBE council
member and Transformation Indaba programme director Noluthando Molao said
political emancipation must translate into economic emancipation, through
transformation initiatives, to build a better South Africa for all.

Within the built environment, the CBE believes
that, besides the quantitative aspects, relating to representativeness,
transformation should also be closely linked to qualitative changes that will
lead to the empowerment of built environment professionals,
while unblocking the skills pipeline and generating new knowledge that enhances
the contribution of the built environment professions towards
the developmental objectives of the country.

This year’s Transformation Indaba was themed “Igniting the Possibilities” and the event discussed unlocking the built environment skills pipeline through adequate resource mobilisation, skills development and leading the South African built environment sector into the Fourth Industrial Revolution.http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/cbe-announces-initiatives-to-drive-transformation-2019-02-07