Government Infrastructure Maintenance Study (GMIS) Presentation to - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

PN 743: Technical Support to the Western Cape Department of Economic Development & Tourism

Government Infrastructure Maintenance Study (GMIS) Presentation to eThekwini

5 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
• pportunities
• Reduces economic costs & facilitates productivity
• Emphasis is on constructing new infrastructure, but also need to

maintain old & newly built infrastructure, & upgrade or replace worn

• ut 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 REFURBISH OR ENCHANCE DISPOSE OR 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

• riginal requirement
• r 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 Learning

See 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

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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
• pportunities 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
• f 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)

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