GCC Engineers in municipalities: The case for a skills development intervention

1. Background

In the early 1920’s the Government Certificate of (GCC) Mines and Works was established as the South
African requirement to ensure safe and proven standards of design, operation and maintenance for
engineering of the built environment across industry, utilities and mines. The curriculum commences with
the requirement for a minimum tertiary qualification and then addresses a wide spectrum of
multidisciplinary practical engineering applications and experience. The certificate of qualification is
obtained by successfully completing an examination set by the DoL (Dept of Labour) for the Factories
certificate and the DME (Dept of Minerals and Energy) for the Mines and Works certificate.

The GCC curriculum has over the years tried to address a shortage of electrical and mechanical
engineering skills in proportion to the number of workers employed. This they achieved by expanding the
knowledge of electrical and mechanical engineers to be overlapping and included the fundamental multi-
disciplinary engineering skills of other disciplines such as civil, chemical and metallurgical in the curriculum.
This has had great safety and cost benefits for industry and the country at large over many years.

However South Africa does not compare well with international comparative surveys on the overall
engineering skills capacity across all disciplines, and this applies to Engineers, Technologists and
Technicians. Developed and leading developing countries exhibit very much higher numbers of engineering
resources per unit head of population. This is well documented and a recent survey¹ published by the
HSRC (Human Sciences Research Council) based on a wide contributory body of research and findings
exemplifies this serious skills dilemma.

Within this scenario the firm Engineer Placements has daily experience of the specific impact of scarce
skills on the employer market. In particular within our findings is the demand for GCC skills across the
board, a demand which is amplified by the statutory requirements for the supervision of engineering plant
as set out in the OSHAct and regulations.

2. Problem Statement

Engineering skills are in short supply, which in the built environment value chain, adversely affects the
ability of employers to manage, engineer, operate, and maintain engineered assets to meet their life-cycle
design parameters, and to ensure the application of safe workplace standards. It is in this environment that
the GCC Engineer plays a key role which in turn depends upon the commensurate supporting skills of the
technologist, technician and artisan.

To comply with the legal requirements of the OSHAct and Regulations², any municipality that has an installed
capacity of electrical power plant equal to or greater than 3000 kw must employ a GCC Engineer in a
supervisory capacity. Currently, according to extrapolated data from the National Energy Regulator of SA
(NERSA) of (2005)³, there are approximately 194 distinct municipalities that fall into this category. The
evidence shows that only a few municipalities comply with this requirement⁴, and whilst contravening the
OSHAct, this would render them responsible for the early decline in the performance of the assets and for
service delivery non-conformance where this depends on the availability and reliability of engineering assets.

¹ Engineers in a Developing country. 2009. See www.hsrcpress.ac.za

² Machinery and Occupational Safety Act, 1983 (Act 6 of 1983). Supervision of Machinery. Section 2 (4)(a)

(ii) if any such sum is 3000 kW or more, the person so designated shall be a person as
referred to in paragraph (c) or (d) of the said definition.

(c) is a graduate engineer and has had not less than two years' post-graduate practical experience in the operation and
maintenance appropriate to the class of machinery he is required to supervise and who has passed the examination on the
Act and the regulations made thereunder, held by the Commission of Examiners in terms of regulations E5 (2) of the
regulations published under Government Notice R.929 of 28 June 1963; [Note: this degree plus law only category is no
longer accepted for certification by the DoL]

(d) is a certificated engineer

³ Provincial electricity sales per economic activity, NERSA, 2005 data

⁴ Numbers and Needs in local government – Allyson Lawless

1
A critical addition to the problem is the crisis in water and sanitation management in municipalities and the
lack of Owner accountability. In discussions with various water management bodies (WISA, WRC, ERWAT,
Stellenbosch University) all concur that specific training in water management and the environment is
essential for Engineers in municipalities.

3. Future imperatives in the municipal environment

It is however evident that the skills and competencies of a qualified GCC Engineer would also be able to
administer the “non-statutory” items (ie those that on their own would not necessarily fall within the plant
category of the OSHAct and Regulations) but are standard municipal assets such as water, sewage and
effluent plant, and which affect environmental issues in particular. By this expanded mandate, we envisage
the GCC Engineer becoming eligible for a rewarding career path in municipal management.

We cannot exclude Engineers from the value chain in the municipal environment or replace them with
artisans of which there is an equal shortage. Artisans are part of the engineering team, and like nurses and
paramedics in the medical team, they can never replace the doctors. The cost of trying to replace multi-
disciplined engineers with artisans or teachers, as has occurred in many rural communities, has or will
impact on the performance and life of the plant assets for which they are responsible. An Engineer is
required to manage the functions of specifying, preparing enquiries, adjudicating contractors’ offerings,
managing construction, operations and maintenance which is the role of the Owner’s (Municipality’s) team,
a role that should not and must not be outsourced to consultants or contractors other than in providing
specific technology advice functions to the Owner.

Professional Engineers in the electrical and mechanical field come from the BSc/BEng conventional
university 4 year degree course and are again limited in numbers. They require at least three years of
experiential training before they can apply for Professional registration. In practice they take more than five
years and if they work in a utility, municipality, factory or in the mining environment and need to be
appointed as the responsible engineer, would still need to register to become GCC Engineers by writing the
relevant exams. The graphic⁵ depicting various routes for the qualification of GCC Engineers illustrates this.

The 5 year historical low pass rate average (<9%) of the GCC examinations by the candidates who register
to write has been researched by Engineer Placements. It was stimulated by the demand for GCC
Engineers by industrial and mining employers who pay high levels of remuneration for these resources,
and yet such resources are in short supply. Engineer Placements consulted candidates, teachers, mentors,
employers, tertiary institutions, the DoL and DME and concluded that three specific causes are responsible.
The first is the combined learning process, the second is the limited basic curricula of engineering content
of the feeder tertiary courses by the Universities of Technology (UoTs) which used to include a 50/50
content of mechanical and electrical subjects - a practise they have mysteriously discontinued, and thirdly
inadequate course and workplace mentoring capacity. Described more fully, the current learning process
defaults to the traditional part-time, self-study mode characterised by minimal course mentor support, no
peer interaction and almost non-existent workplace mentorship availability combined with the stress of the
imbalanced tertiary content, a matter that learners have little means to resolve on their own.

At the same time Engineer Placements were invited by the SAICE Local Government Support Initiative that
is providing civil engineering mentorship support to municipalities, to contribute the mechanical and
electrical work-log input for their student training curriculum. During this process, it became evident that this
Initiative had identified what it termed an equivalent skills crisis affecting municipalities in respect of
engineering competence to manage the electrical and mechanical functions. This resulted in a request to
submit a proposal to find solutions to equipping municipalities with the required level of Mechanical and
Electrical Engineers, with the particular focus on the need for GCC Engineers.

4. Proposed Solutions

A strategic, systematic approach to this challenge was adopted. A decisive goal needed to be established
that would provide an effective solution. This required analysis of the data available that described the
municipal environment in terms of quanta, typical functional roles and responsibilities, the compliance with
OSHAct and Regulations, current availability of engineering resources, current practices etc. Particular
cognisance was taken of the resolutions made in the 2008 Electrical Distribution Maintenance Summit⁶.

⁵ ICMEESA education route graphic. Alternative routes to follow for the Engineer’s Certificate of Competency (See appendix)
⁶ 2008 Electrical Distribution Maintenance Summit. Gallager Estate 09/10 June 2008 . Summit Resolutions

2
It would require the involvement of the relevant representative bodies such as the AMEU – The Association
of Municipal Electricity Undertakings), the electrical distribution industry EDI - Electricity Distribution
Industry Holdings (Pty) Ltd, NERSA, the applicable training authority LGSETA - Local Government SETA. It
has involved discussions with various training forums and engineering associations on use and availability
of mentors including ICMEESA - Institution of Certificated Mechanical and Electrical Engineers, the
SAIMechE – SA Institution of Mechanical Engineering, the SAIEE – SA Institution of Electrical Engineers,
the MQA – Mining Qualifications Authority and the registration process of GCC Engineers being addressed
by ECSA – The Engineering Council of SA. The solution requires that supplementation course material be
added to address the tertiary institutions current lack of coverage course-wise in both mechanical &
electrical subjects in their curricula to align the training with the GCC curriculum. Engineer Placements can
compile this with the input of the UoTs. It also requires additional basic mathematics and study guides
which have already been developed to supplement the GCC VLE curriculum.

Following the presentation by Engineer Placements of this training proposal to the AMEU Training and
th
Education Committee in Port Alfred on the 24 June 2009, the Committee unanimously agreed to support
the proposal in principle as being necessary to provide the need for their GCC skills, and that the
municipalities that could offer to act as cluster (training) municipalities would submit their agreements to the
AMEU Council. During discussions after the meeting, the representatives from the following municipalities
advised that they would like to offer cluster facilities.

Ekurhuleni, Tshwane, George, Polokwane, Tzaneen, Ethekwini, Buffalo City, Bloemfontein

The Chief Operations Officer of EDI expressed interest in the programme to train GCC Engineers for its
future particular distribution functions.

5. The proposed training solution model

1. A goal: 200 Mechanical and Electrical EITs (Engineers In Training) qualified to GCC status within 38
months from start of project. This includes 2 months set up prior to the 36 month training period. The
practical training period for the GCC EIT according to the education route graphic (see footnote on page 2)
varies from 2 to 4 years. On average for a UoT qualified EIT (B Tech) a three year period has been used.
The DoL takes into consideration the quality of practical training in finally determining eligibility to write the
examination.

2. A requirement to procure licence to the GCC curriculum, modify, and capture on a VLE platform. Identify
and include additional supplementary course content.

3. A need for the set up of a training management structure and contractual agreements

4. Recruit EITs and Mentors

5. Identify participating cluster municipalities with AMEU and available line mentor support

6. Summary tentative projected cost for full programme: Course provision: R65 Million. EIT stipends: R76
million. See business projections⁷

⁷ Engineer Placement’s business projections for GCC Engineer training for municipalities. (See appendix)

EPSummary report © /dbsa/Rev3