This year has been a year of transformation for the SAIW. We ended last year in disarray, needing to make some urgent interventions to secure the sustainability and credibility of the Institute. I am pleased to say that this process has been largely successful.
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First and foremost, we needed to drastically improve our interaction with students in terms of turnaround times between examinations, results being made available and certificates being issued. This turnaround has been most successful. We have appointed several new lecturers, who are enthusiastic and doing well. And until all positions are filled, we have secured the services of contractors to help deliver the services and turnaround performance our students deserve. We are also carefully monitoring complaints, which enables us to act quickly on the issues students are experiencing.
Since July, student numbers on all our courses have been healthy, and complaints have decreased significantly. We are going further, though, to improve every aspect of the student experience. At the starting point of this process is the new SAIW website. We have incorporated an easy-access portal into the website, enabling potential students to browse our courses with immediate access to register and pay for a course. We have developed a new Student Management System that integrates with this portal, which will soon provide students with quick access to their exam results. Additionally, their end-of-course certificates will be made available digitally as soon as all course requirements have been met. Work is also underway automate the setting of examinations and marking, which will remove some of the workload from lecturers and allow all students to receive same-day results for each examination they take.
We are striving to modernise our welding courses. As well as having introduced virtual welding units into our courses to help welders adapt more quickly to real-world welding, we are also introducing laser welding to our offering. We hope this process will extend the SAIW’s reach into the automotive manufacturing industry and its many Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers. Beyond that, it’s a way of making welding more exciting for the upcoming digital-age generation.
With Necsa, the SAIW has also initiated upskilling our NDT training team in preparation for the full launch of the Necsa Centre of Excellence for NDT. This is in preparation for the nuclear new-build programme outlined in the 2025 Draft of ESKOM’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), which now has Government approval. The initial training course in the advanced NDT Techniques has now been completed, and our SAIW specialist NDT Team is primed to take this programme forward in the new year.
Our surveys suggest that this modern approach is what students want, and that our initiatives are bearing fruit.
Also very pleasing is the successful transformation of our Certification services. For Company Certification, for example, we are now using a digital platform to capture and store the necessary documentation to certify a company according to the SAIW ISO 3834 Company Certification Scheme. This makes the management of compliance according to the scheme far more efficient, for both SAIW auditors and the company seeking certifications. The digital database of certified companies can be easily kept up to date. Once the development is completed, companies and their clients will be able to access this database via the SAIW Website.
Also being digitised in the near future are our Personnel Certification databases, including the Competent Person’s (CP), Inspectors or Pressurised Equipment (IPE), NDT and IIW databases of registered professionals.
I thank the welding community for their commitment and support for the SAIW throughout this process: for continuing to believe that we are on the right path and that the SAIW is the best organisation to deliver to their expectations. And thank you to all the staff, both those who are new and those who have persevered with us. You are making a positive impact, and it is being noticed.
I wish you all a peaceful, restful and happy end-of-year break, and I look forward to continuing this journey with you in the new year.
Joseph Zinyana
