With the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbating SA’s poor economic performance, the skills and experience of consulting engineers must be well-deployed and nurtured as a foundation for recovery.
SRK Consulting managing director Vis Reddy warned that the Covid-19 environment will put pressure on the sustainability of the consulting engineering sector.
“Many consulting engineering firms are not able to keep staff at full salary or full complement, and some have already laid off staff,” said Reddy. “The industry could risk losing talent and experience, as any large-scale job shedding leads to people taking up other careers. As a sector, we really need to minimise that.”
He said the redirecting of government revenue towards addressing the pandemic inevitably meant less for infrastructure and development.
“Before the lockdown, there were signs that government was about to raise spending levels, but now that opportunity is either reduced or significantly delayed,” he said.
He noted that, while SRK as a company was not very dependent on public sector spending, the issue is concerning for the country as a whole – especially as it affected the sustainability of infrastructure. As part of its contribution to addressing the current state of disaster, SRK has been collaborating with the Covid-19 support initiative of Business Unity South Africa (Busa) and is providing pro-bono advisory and review support for Busa’s focus on water supply.
Reddy emphasised the importance of leveraging the experience of consulting engineers and scientists by retaining and mentoring young professionals in the sector.
“Going forward, Covid-19’s ongoing threats to health will give younger people in SRK the opportunity to step up,” he said. “We will be deploying our senior people more judiciously, given their greater susceptibility to the virus.”
Younger professionals in the firm will – wherever possible – be taking on more of the site work, giving them access to a different sort of engagement. It is likely that most of SRK’s experienced people will spend more time in the office or at home, and less time travelling.
“While this makes them more efficient, it can also mean they have more time to mentor and share their experience with younger colleagues as travel time is lost time,” he said. “We anticipate that our flexibility as a company, and our ability to innovate and adapt will help us serve customers operating in the new ‘normal’ Covid-19 environment.”
He expected more demand for production from consumer goods industries, in contrast to the anticipated slowdown in strategic infrastructure investment in the short term. However, he emphasised the vital role that consulting engineers currently needed to be playing in longer term projects – which should be wasting no time in kicking off their planning stages.
“Those industries that take a strategic view of the future to plan and implement long term projects now will benefit the most going forward,” he said.
Equipped with the necessary communication technology and cloud-based data storage systems, SRK has been continuing to work productively on a range of projects. Relaxation of lockdown constraints is also allowing essential site visits to take place.
