PN 743: Technical Support to the Western Cape Department of Economic Development & Tourism
Government Infrastructure Maintenance Study (GMIS)
Presentation to eThekwini5 July 2017
PRESENTED BY:
Shirley Robinson
DATE:
05 | 07 | 2017
Investing in Infrastructure Maintenance
Investment in new & existing infrastructure critical to economic
competitiveness & development
Infrastructure as an ‘Enabler’
Way in which infrastructure is planned, provided, used, maintained,
& even disposed of enables socio-economic development
Improves spatial planning, access to services & economic
opportunities
Reduces economic costs & facilitates productivity
Emphasis is on constructing new infrastructure, but also need to
maintain old & newly built infrastructure, & upgrade or replace worn
out or obsolete infrastructure.
NB that Infrastructure Delivery embraces Life Cycle approach from
asset design & construction through to operation & maintenance, and
thereafter disposal
Infrastructure Delivery Life Cycle Approach
PLAN & DEVELOP
CREATE OR
ACQUIRE
OPERATE &
MAINTAIN
REFURBISHOR
ENCHANCE
DISPOSEOR
UPGRADE INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
SYSTEM&
PROCUREMENT
Collect & update:•Asset register•Technical & operational documents•Maintenance budgets & strategy•Guarantees and/or warranties
DISPOSE OF IA
•Med. To long term maintenance plans•Upgrade or refurbish facilities•Applications for special funds
•Disposal of or removal of asset from original requirement or use•Upgrade to new requirement & extend asset life cycle use
Acquire Or Create Via:•Development•Purchase•PPP Deal•S & LB Deal•Lease•Upgrade
Policy, Standards & Strategy
Inadequate Maintenance – Why?
Public infrastructure maintenance mostly unplanned emergency
maintenance, hardly any scheduled/ planned maintenance
Inadequate budgeting for maintenance
National infrastructure conditional grants for new infrastructure
Maintenance is municipal spending responsibility
Given other municipal priorities (particularly salaries & wages), budgetary
allocation for maintenance low
Technical skills shortage in municipalities (specifically qualified artisans
required for supervisory & mentoring artisan trainees)
Specific competencies required by municipalities are not trained in FET
colleges
Trade tests are not developed yet for scarce skills in municipalities
Result – Negative Impact on Service Delivery!
Review of Municipal Infrastructure Funding
Widening gap between national ring-fenced infrastructure conditional
grant allocations and municipal infrastructure maintenance funding
NT leading continues to lead consultations on the review of local
government infrastructure grants.
Reforms will focus on:
Improving asset management incentives,
Strengthening rules for the use of grant funds for refurbishment;
&
Enhancing oversight by national departments
Skills & Artisan Development
NSDS III guides skills development, policy change from NSDS II
to NSDS III had major impact on funding:
Mandatory grants were reduced from 50% to 20%;
PIVOTAL grant introduced to finance skills development :
Professional, vocational, technical & academic
Programmes which provide a full occupationally
directed qualification
Bridge the gap between learning in college or
university and on the job learning in the workplace
All training which leads to employment – including
apprenticeships
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NSDS III Levy/Grant Breakdown
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PIVOTAL* = Professional, vocational, technical & academic LearningSee CHIETA presentation 2011: 2011/12 DISCRETIONARY GRANT (DG)
Company Skills Development
Levy Contribution
National Skills Fund (NSF)
SETA Administration
Discretionary Grant
Mandatory Grant
PIVOTAL * Grant
Managed by government (DHET) to fund national skills development priorities. (a.k.a. ‘catalytic’ fund)
Ring-fenced to fund the operations of the Seta
Aimed to sponsor organisations’ SD interventions that are in line with the sector scarce and critical skills needs
Refunded to companies upon submission of an ATR/WSP application that is approved by the SETA
Bridging programme to achieve an occupational qualification
Why the GIMS?
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FET College graduates with limited work
experience
Dilapidated public infrastructure due to lack of maintenance
How can these elements be brought
together?
Key findings FET Colleges
FET Colleges offer more generic skills – hardly accompanied by practical experience;
Challenges to place students for practical work experience;
Students not adequately prepared to interact in working environment (work readiness);
National Certificate Vocational (NCV) not acknowledged in public & private sector;
Interaction between colleges & municipalities rare;
Colleges offer what is required in their respective region
Key findings Municipalities
Strategic HRD and planning is limited
Best Practice: CoCT Electricity
Municipalities focus on training and up-skilling of existing staff
Significant numbers of maintenance staff undertaking artisanal work but not formally qualified as artisans
Not all unqualified artisans keen to qualify (outside regulatory trades)
Skills and competency needs in municipalities are very specific;
Infrastructure investment does not relate to increase in personnel
Shortage of staff in critical positions;
Lack of mentors to guide graduates;
1 mentor on qualified artisan level is required to oversee 2 graduates
Key findings and observations
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Key findings and observations
The readiness of municipalities to take on learners and graduates from colleges is not adequate yet;
The readiness of FET Colleges to prepare learners and graduates for placement in municipalities and SOEs is equally not adequate (in terms of skill and competency set as well as in terms of attitude and aptitude);
The current placement programmes are important but don’t have the necessary impact
Quantity before quality?
Tracking system required (ito those agencies that facilitate placement as well as for FET Colleges) in order to identify impact of programme.
The intake of interns/graduates is highly linked to availability of funds provided by government and not so much by the need;
Partnerships between the FET Colleges and other public (and private) sector organisations is not optimally functioning 10
City of Cape Town Case Study
Led strategically through the City IDP
Strategic Area 1: Opportunity City – to create an economically
enabling environment in which investment can grow and jobs can be
created
Investing in new and maintaining existing economic & social
infrastructure
Prioritised investment in expansion & maintenance of key utility
infrastructure – electricity, water & sanitation, solid waste, public
transport – to underpin City’s infrastructure-led growth
Focus on investing in bulk infrastructure delivery according to life
cycle asset management so preventative maintenance and timely
upgrades will optimise maintenance spend & reduce service failures
Recognises that focus on infrastructure maintenance requires
increase in technical skills & capacity
Maximise use of SETAs, EPWP & rolling out extensive
apprenticeship programme to Electricity, Water & Sanitation, Solid
Waste, & Roads
City of Cape Town Case Study
Mayoral Apprenticeship Programme intends to expand and
deepen the City’s current programmes,:
200 apprentices will be trained a year;
New apprenticeship programme that will see the CoCT partnering
with FET colleges to provide 50 bursaries for the practical aspects or
work integrated learning components.
External bursaries that will see the CoCT provide 60 bursaries a
year, expanding to 80 once apprenticeship bursaries are included,
and in later years to 110 bursaries.
In-service training of students requiring work-based experience to
graduate. The CoCT initially provided 450 work-based experience
opportunities before expanding to 600 opportunities over the next
few years.
Graduate internships within the City are limited to engineering and
environment.
CoCT’s partnership with the EPWP
City of Cape Town Case Study: Electricity
Following NERSA 2006 technical audit CoCT Electricity Services
department (CCTES) initiated a multi-year programme to
implement an enterprise asset management system using the
CoCT’s SAP information & technology software platform.
CoCT operates a city-wide SAP-based enterprise resource
planning (ERP) system, which is considered one of the largest
SAP implementations in local government, as it is used for the
entire CoCT back office including logistics, human resources,
finance, and now asset management.
In 2007 ESS contracted Pragma Africa to establish an asset care
centre (ACC) using the CoCT’s SAP software information
technology platform, rather than Pragma’s On Key enterprise
asset management system.
Involved assessing the ESS’s asset management maturity and
developing an asset management improvement programme,
driven through the Pragma asset care centre.
City of Cape Town Case Study: Electricity
ESS contracted Pragma to run an asset care centre at ESS
premises, whereby 6 Pragma resources (engineers, planners,
schedulers and data administrators) are dedicated to ESS and
integrated into ESS’s structures and processes.
Prior to implementing the asset care centre, ESS’s operational
challenges included inadequate control on work requirements
and queuing processes; long lead times; no sequencing or
monitoring & tracking; an underutilised SAP system; and no
feedback.
Division also faced considerable staffing shortages given a 40
per cent increase in work load due to restructuring; lack of
remuneration incentives for increased responsibilities given
increased work load; low morale among staff; and no additional
budgetary allocations.
City of Cape Town Case Study: Electricity
The asset care centre has addressed these challenges by
focusing on 5 key performance areas – information management;
contractor management; project management; work planning &
control; and performance management aligned to focused
interventions for improvement – creating a top 100 job priority list
Required that the CCTES implement a medium to longer term
strategic approach to its human resource and staffing plans.
Constrained shortage of technical skills as well as by the legacy
of ten years of attrition across the CoCT that targeted a reduction
in the City’s overall staffing numbers.
Broad application of the City’s attrition policy saw a slow decline
in staffing numbers wherever vacancies occurred. The
unintended consequence of the blanket approach saw staffing
numbers decline in key technical areas, including within the
CCTES, given greater competition for these skills in the external
market.
City of Cape Town Case Study: Electricity
Due to the technical and regulatory nature of CCTES’s core
business and with a long term view to planning for future
technology applications such as smart and green technologies,
training and skills development now forms a key priority for the
CCTES’s strategic human resourcing plans in support of EAM
implementation.
Funded as a separate cost unit within CCTES departmental
budget, training and skills development is considered a critical
intervention for the CCTES to fill its organisational structure in
support of its service delivery targets.
CCTES has an internal and an external training stream. Internal
training is focused primarily on training existing unqualified
CCTES permanent employees. As internal trainees are full time
CCTES staff, line managers have first call on their productive
time and services, with training based on the operational
requirements of line managers.
City of Cape Town Case Study: Electricity
Starting at NQF level 1 and continuing to completion of a trade
test over four to five years, the CCTES learnership programme
has achieved considerable success with an 85 per cent
throughput rate that has seen 38 candidates completing their
trade test in 2012 and a further 7 in 2013.
The CCTES also implements its own recognition of prior learning
(RPL) programmes for electrical technicians that are required to
be proficient in other trades. The training is outsourced to private
providers (such as DCM) as well as public FET colleges (such as
Northlink).
The CCTES also has a category for special workmen that
engage in similar work to an artisan, learning the trade through
experience and modular training with the CCTES in order to
assist them to prepare for and undertake the relevant trade test
and qualify as an artisan. RPL programmes are all competency
based drawing on a display of skill and assessment using a
portfolio of evidence that is submitted to the relevant SETA for
approval.
City of Cape Town Case Study: Electricity
CCTES external training targets two distinct tracks –
apprenticeships and graduates – that target strategic technical
and engineering areas.
Reintroduced in 2008 as a 2-year programme, the CCTES
accelerated apprenticeship programme is run internally at the
Maitland Training Facility, focusing on electrical engineering (at
NQF levels 1 to 5 and at the different voltage levels – low
voltage, medium voltage and high voltage).
The programme recruits externally, advertising in local
newspapers for electrical apprentices with a minimum of a Grade
12 pass in mathematics and science or a NATED N3 or NCV 4
with relevant trade subjects.
City of Cape Town Case Study: Electricity
Targets further specialised electrical training that enables
candidates to qualify as specialised high voltage or medium
voltage electricians or distribution network operators.
Programme has trained just short of 300 specialised electricians,
all of whom were absorbed into the CCTES.
Programme’s expansion has increased the CCTES’s mentoring
requirements given that apprentices have to be supervised by
qualified electricians on a 2:1
CCTES has also sponsored 134 managers and supervisors on
the Cape Peninsular University of Technology (CPUT)’s
mentorship programme.
Key Message is that CCTES views training as a long term
investment for the division that over time yields a committed
and productive workforce
Proposed Elements of GIMP Toolkit
GIMP task team set up under PSF focused on developing a GIMP toolkit where
the Proposed Elements of GIMP Toolkit
Development of a maturity /progression model to determine the state of
readiness and support required in FET Colleges and the municipalities
Documenting and sharing Best Practice Models (CoCT Electricity model)
Include seconding project managers from local municipalities into best
practice teams to learn and then take back to apply in LM
Recognition of Prior Learning focused on qualifying the bulk of unqualified
artisans currently employed within municipalities
Mentoring programme directed towards Senior or Supervisory Artisans in
Municipalities
Upscaling Work readiness programmes within FETs & municipalities
FETs to provide specific municipal skill related courses/ modules as
additional inserts to NCV (e.g. bulk water reticulation etc)20
GTAC
Government Technical Advisory Centre
Private Bag X115
Pretoria 0001
GTAC
Government Technical Advisory Centre
240 Madiba Street
Pretoria 0002
www.gtac.gov.za