Back in the day, consulting engineering firms were making money hand over fist. There were no black consulting engineers. Government handed out projects on a rota system. Fees were based on a percentage of contract value, so there was no incentive for consulting engineers to design anything cheaply.

This was good and bad. Bad, it was costly. Good, it lasted forever. Another reason that the consulting engineering firms made money was that, while the bosses were registered professional engineers, the people doing the actual work were not. In general, they were technicians or people who had just “learned on the job”. At that time, there was work reserved for professional engineers, but really only civil, structural and mechanical engineers work was reserved – not electrical. This allowed the technicians or people who had just “learned on the job” to do the design work and project management, while the registered professional engineers played golf on Wednesday afternoons. Oh happy days.

By virtue of the Engineering Profession Act (EPA) of 2000, all the South African Council of Professional Engineers registration engineers were deemed to fall under the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA). ESI Africa reports: “While the Engineering Profession Act has not made registration mandatory in South Africa, operating as a nonregistered person limits the scope of engineering work an engineering professional may perform.” These restrictions include not being able to sign off on engineering projects and having to work under the supervision of a professionally registered engineer across all professional categories (Pr Eng, Pr Tech Eng, Pr Techni Eng, Pr Cert Eng).

But, in point of fact, this is not the case at all; a whole lot of people have found out that, like a dodgy politician, they can have no qualifications whatsoever but call themselves engineers and get great-paying projects.

Even better, they can get great-paying projects without calling themselves engineers but just by claiming to be experts. One of the fields where this is becoming a major issue is environmental-impact assessments. In many projects, the noise impact on the surroundings is a major issue. However, developers and environmental practitioners have discovered that there is a handy bunch of persons who are prepared to do noise-impact assessments and write reports which are very long and complicated. The reports always find in favour of the developers. Now, nobody is breaking the law – there is no requirement for noise- impact assessors to be ECSA registered professional engineers, which is convenient, since most of them are not registered. But there is a downside: some projects whistle through the Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries (DEFF) when, in fact, they should never have been considered: wind farms in wilderness areas, wind farms 5 km from Addo African Elephant Park, gas turbine stations near bird colonies, coal mines near heritage sites. Now, it is the DEFF that makes the final decisions on all this – if a self-appointed environmental noise- impact expert submits a report, they rely on it. They would similarly accept a report from a self-appointed bird- and bat-impact expert. The DEFF expects that the overall environmental-impact practitioner would ensure these people are experts but how would the department know? The simplest way would be requiring that they be registered with ECSA. But ECSA does not push to make any electrical or noise-assessment work reserved for registered persons. The result of these noise-impact assessments, if badly done, is that the general public has to mobilise money and time and lawyers and fight the DEFF, which woodenly states: “We rely on the recommendations of our experts.” But nothing is done. This is a tragedy. You can always rewire a building or repair a badly designed bridge. But when the environment is destroyed, it stays that way.