Gauteng Infrastructure Development and Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs MEC Jacob Mamabolo has unveiled a new digital solution to support its already established Lutsinga Infrastructure House, the nerve centre for Gauteng’s infrastructure projects.

The Infrastructure Delivery Platform (iDEP) is designed to mitigate the various challenges and delays experienced in the completion and delivery of infrastructure projects, including schools, hospitals, clinics and libraries, besides many others, across Gauteng.

“Too often infrastructure delivery projects, which have been delayed, are costing more than what was initially planned. Delivering new infrastructure and maintaining existing infrastructure in time and within budget is our top priority,” said Mamabolo during the launch on Thursday.

With a high rate of inefficiency and ineffectiveness, amid various difficulties and challenges in the delivery of social and public infrastructure, the iDEP system will serve as a centralised project delivery information hub for all projects implemented and managed by the Department of Infrastructure Development (DID) on behalf of Gauteng provincial government departments.

“It is about empowering communities with productive assets, giving the people assets that are critical to improving their qualities of life and making sure that we can also protect them against risks, such as climate change and its threat and risks to human life.”

The initiative, which is aligned with Mamabolo’s "getting the basics right" approach, focuses on addressing key challenges in project management, particularly the consistent delays and budget overruns that have plagued infrastructure projects.

The platform aims to streamline processes, improve oversight and ensure that quality projects are delivered on time and within budget.

“We have a high rate of projects that are incomplete, projects in distress, and projects that are experiencing difficulties, some of them are abandoned.”

“If we do not do something . . . do it promptly, efficiently and effectively, the number of incomplete projects or projects in distress will far outpace the number of projects that are supposed to be green or that are supposed to be on track,” he warned.

Identifying the weaknesses in project pipelines, the DID, in partnership with the Department of eGovernment and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, besides others, has developed the iDEP system as a comprehensive solution to these issues.

The physical Lutsinga Infrastructure House and the digital platform will complement and work with each other, enabling extensive monitoring of projects and the progress being made.

The digital solution, which boasts multidisciplinary, multidimensional capability focusing on quality, cost and duration, comprises a suite of interventions housed in what Mamabolo called an infrastructure ecosystem.

Smart technologies incorporated include the infrastructure project risk management dashboard, which assesses supply chain, scheduling and construction mafia risks, besides others, as well as the project readiness matrix, which ensures the project is fully ready for implementation, besides others.

The portfolio of evidence and extensive site management elements show exactly what is going on at any site at any given point, to ensure activities are correct and progressing as per schedule.

Infrastructure project rescue interventions will ensure capacity and mitigate any cash flow problems experienced by contractors, while the infrastructure governance lab will deal with consequence management, underperformance and dispute resolutions, including disputes and court proceedings with service providers, suppliers and contractors that can be resolved more rapidly out of court.

“We are ready to make sure that we deliver infrastructure much more rapidly. We deliver infrastructure within costs, that even if there are changes to the initial costs, the budget allocated can be agreed upon, understood and well supported.”