CSIR contribution to the 2010 state of engineering infrastructure in South Africa report card

Abstract

In 2006, the South African Institution of Civil Engineering (SAICE), utilising desktop research documentation prepared for this specific purpose by the CSIR, released the first ever “report card” of the state of engineering infrastructure in South Africa. This highlighted “the observations of the professionals responsible for the planning, construction, operation and maintenance of our nation’s life-support system”. It graded infrastructure (water, sanitation, solid waste, roads, airports, ports, rail, electricity and hospitals and clinics) on a scale from A+ through E-. Overall, it gave the nation’s infrastructure a D+ grade. The importance of infrastructure for social and economic development is underestimated and consequently its maintenance is often neglected. The purpose of the report card was to draw the attention of government, and of the public at large, to the importance of maintenance, and to factors underlying the state of repair of infrastructure – factors such as skills and finance, for example. The report card was a great success in that it received media coverage exceeding the highest expectations. SAICE last year approached CSIR Built Environment with a request to again prepare desktop research documentation, on the basis of which the different infrastructure sectors could be graded. Agreement was reached, and, at the time of writing (June 2010) the research documents for most of the sectors have been completed or are nearly completed. SAICE will thereafter, with the assistance of the CSIR, grade each infrastructure sector, prepare the final document, and launch it towards the end of the third quarter of 2010. It is anticipated that the 2010 report card will, as in 2006, be widely disseminated and debated. Even more so, because, since 2006, service delivery problems (and what to do about them), and in particular those problems attributable to inadequacies of operation and maintenance of infrastructure, have received heightened attention -- from communities, in the media, and from government.