ERB Forum urged to value creativity and innovation

Own Correspondent

 1^st March 2022

 The Ministry of Infrastructure and Housing Development has implored the engineering community to be creative and innovative to add value to entire engineering value chain in official opening remarks at the 2nd Annual Engineering Forum 2022 based on theme “Creative Engineering Value Chain – Advancing towards Industry 4.0”.

 “This will expedite both our fraternity’s and indeed Botswana’s developmental nexus to fully embrace the 4^th Industrial Revolution. This ties neatly with Botswana’s national development aspirations of attaining a high income economy status based on knowledge and innovation from the current upper middle income economy, said Eric Molale, Minister of Infrastructure and Housing Development, in official opening remarks.

 He said, “Already, government has embarked on the economic transformation drive to reduce dependence on mineral revenue and to generate growth based on competitiveness, productivity, efficiency and openness to the world. The engineering community as a significant developmental player is, therefore, expected to play its part in this endeavour.”

 Engineers are innovators and therefore are expected to take the lead in a multi-stakeholder effort to generate solutions to the challenges.

 These challenges include high rates of unemployment; huge income gaps; poor service delivery; environmental impact of climate change which stifles food production efforts and drives up the cost of living; corruption; crime; non-communicable diseases and recently the Covid-19 pandemic.

 Officials maintain that infrastructure is already in place to facilitate innovative solutions and these include institutions of higher learning, technical colleges, the Botswana Innovation Hub (BIH), Companies and Intellectual Property Authority (CIPA) and the Botswana Bureau of Standards (BOBS).  

 “I am informed of a number of patents that have been registered with CIPA and production prototypes which are the result of work by our innovators. These include the foot and mouth diagnostic strip, drought resistant cowpeas and Signcoach computer application. All these patents have been registered with CIPA in Gaborone and two with the the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) (2019 data). The glaring challenge is lack of capital to take these prototypes to production. Government and stakeholders are working to improve the start-up financing ecosystem in the country,” said Molale.

 This second ERB Forum takes place against the backdrop of an industry faced by a plethora of challenges. Among these include abandoned projects; delivery of substandard engineering work; increase in engineering related litigation; bulging project cost overruns on public works; a disconnect between industry and academia leading to skills mismatch between academic programmes offered by education institutions and actual skills needed by the industry; and engineers who continue to practice without having registered with the Engineers Registration Board.

 To remedy these anomalies, a number of interventions have been or are to be implemented. My Ministry is working to set-up a Construction Industry Authority for better expound regulation of the industry. Following approval to draft a bill to amend the Engineers Registration Act by Cabinet in November 2021, consultations with stakeholders have since been concluded and the ministry is in the process of submitting draft instructions to Attorney Generals Chambers. 

 The Engineers Registration Board instituted a survey in 2017 and its findings culminated in the Engineers Registration Board’s Marketing Strategy 2017 – 2020. One of the objectives of that strategy is to enhance the reputation of the engineering profession in Botswana, and hosting this Forum satisfies this strategic objective. The other objectives were related to registration and using appropriate platforms for communicating with Graduate engineers.

 Furthermore, the Engineers Forum and various other seminars have generated recommendations on how the engineering fraternity – and other built environment professions – can embrace the Fourth Industrial Revolution so as to deliver engineering projects in a cost effective manner. Key among these recommendations are:

 Organizations should adopt innovative project based business models in order to attain transformation from the old to the new. Employees at all levels should be skilled in programme and project management techniques especially the agile project management methodology;

• Educational institutions should experiment with new and innovative instructional methodologies and offer courses in new areas such as robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI);
• Corruption must be uprooted in all its facets from our systems especially at procurement stage;
• Engineers must incorporate sustainable development principles into their practice by developing processes that reduce waste, promote use of renewable resources, process natural resources efficiently with little or no waste, and reuse and recycle resources as part of the Value Chain Development under the Reset Agenda;
• Use of Renewable Energy Technologies (RETs) as an alternative to fossil fuels;
• Adoption of STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics – as an alternative educational methodology to prepare learners for the Fourth Industrial Revolution;
• Adoption of precision farming to increase food production. This calls for integration of robotics and big data;
• Employer Terms of Reference should be detailed in line with existing the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC) standard,  New Engineering Contracts (NEC)  standard or any other standard for that matter;
• Public projects should have built-in maintenance budgets as once delivered, these projects are hardly ever maintained. Previously in Government, every development project included a provision of 10 to 15% for maintenance and this has to be reinstated as we see many buildings dilapidate before being put into beneficial use.
• Employers should have nominated sub-contractors who take full responsibility for their part of the work and not depend solely on the principal contractor. This would be in line with Economic Inclusion Act and the re-enacted Public Procurement Law. Furthermore, this would reduce project cost overruns and ensure good quality of services and products delivered;
• Examine the most feasible way of coming up with improved/ enhanced Project Management techniques within my Ministry for all Public Infrastructure. A good example is the United Kingdom where they set up a Projects Authority which coordinates all public infrastructure projects in liaison with the treasury and reports directly to Cabinet; and finally,
• Practice Value Engineering where the Focus is on the front end of the project cycle where scrutiny is exercised in the planning stages to avert challenges later during execution including removing ambiguity of Invitation to Tender. It is also at this level that decisions on innovative and appropriate technologies and green methods in the construction industry should be made

 This clearly lays out the fundamental changes needed in policy, institutions and mind-set needed to transform Botswana from an economy that largely depends on mineral revenue to the one based on competitiveness, productivity, efficiency and openness. Our work should contribute to the four key priorities in the National Transformation Agenda and these are:

 Moving away from dependence upon diamonds and government, and making concerted strides towards economic diversification;

• Generating national income from being competitive, productive and efficient, rather than from the consumption of our mineral good fortune; 
• Opening up our country to investors and visitors, in the process creating a vibrant economy and society integrated into the global economy; and finally
• Enabling Batswana to be independent, self-reliant, entrepreneurial in spirit, rather than dependent upon the state, and transforming the role of government from control to facilitation.

 True to the spirit of our theme today – Creative Engineering Value Chain – Advancing towards Industry 4.0 – infusing creative and innovative methodologies in the entire engineering value chain should expedite our adoption of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

“This will then drive Botswana’s socio-economic development and hasten the transformation necessary for the country to attain its aspirations of a high income economy built on knowledge as opposed to mineral resources, said Molale.

This forum is one of the initiatives from the 3-year Marketing Strategy developed and approved by the ERB Board of Directors in 2017. Through this initiative, the Board endeavours to enhance the reputation of the engineering profession in Botswana. The Board consciously determined that there ought to be a forum, a think tank or platform for intellectual exchanges amongst and between engineers and other pertinent stakeholders on engineering issues of common interest and for the benefit of the profession and the country at large and for continued conversation about engineering. 

“The Board aims through this event to facilitate discussions of ideas, industry challenges and solutions; share with and inform one another on technological development trends applicable to their industry; get policy guidance and direction from Government stakeholders; share development plans from investors and developers as appropriate in order to sensitise industry players; etc, just to mention a few,” said Ms Gaonyatsege Kwakwa, Vice Chairperson of the Engineers Registration Board(ERB).

She said, “The Board wishes for this forum to be held annually and acknowledge that the forum would only be sustainable through collective efforts of industry stakeholders. As indicated in the previous forum, the Board recognises that the Engineering Forum brand must be offered to those institutions or entities better placed to ensure sustenance into the future.”