Progress report on the review of the National Infrastructure Management Strategy; Report on the recent training of Infrastructure South Africa; with Minister and Deputy Minister

Public Works and Infrastructure

26 October 2022
Chairperson: Ms N Ntobongwana (ANC)
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Meeting Summary

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The Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI) and Infrastructure South Africa (ISA) briefed the Portfolio Committee in a virtual meeting on progress with the review of the National Infrastructure Management Strategy (NIMS) and the recent training of ISA on its five-case model to enhance the implementation of government infrastructure projects.

The Department said there was strong evidence that much of the country's infrastructure from both before and after 1994 was not being properly maintained. Several challenges undermined maintenance being undertaken. The DPWI and the Construction Industry Development Board developed a draft of the National Immovable Asset Maintenance Management framework to combat this. The NIMS team reviewed documents such as the Immovable Asset Management Policy and the Immovable Asset Life Cycle Management guideline. ISA adopted and customised the five-case model used for infrastructure projects overseas. The United Kingdom government has been requested to support South Africa with training on the model for all ISA staff and relevant officials in the various spheres of government in South Africa, and 139 had been trained thus far.

Members asked questions about the various stages of the five-case model, such as how long each stage would take, and what the cost implications were. They also raised concerns about inadequate maintenance as challenges to infrastructure development, the lack of consequence management in the DPWI, and the up-skilling of ISA and the Department's staff. They also felt that ISA’s presentation was too technical and not understandable for the layman.

The Department and ISA answered the Committee’s questions on the various stages of the five-case model, explaining that it aimed to solve issues related to planning and unexpected delays in projects. The time period of the model depended on factors such as the sector involved, and the size and complexity of the project. It also noted the Committee’s concerns about the presentation being too technical, and assured the Committee that the skills lacking in the Department were being created. 

Meeting report

The Chairperson provided context to the meeting, stating that the Committee had requested a progress report on the review of the National Infrastructure Management Strategy (NIMS), and a report on the recent training of Infrastructure South Africa (ISA) on the five case model and project development route map. This request was made because the Committee was concerned about improving service delivery, providing office space, courts, police stations and social infrastructure. Infrastructure South Africa was the driver of all the major infrastructure projects in South Africa. The Committee wanted to understand the Department’s programme on routine maintenance, not reactive maintenance. It believed that the NIMS would assist in improving service delivery.

Deputy Minister's introductory comments

Deputy Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure, Noxolo Kiviet, said she appreciated the opportunity to brief the Committee on the Department’s strategies. She reminded the Committee that President Ramaphosa gave the country a directive at the State of the Nation Address (SONA) to move away from consumptive expenditure, look at productive activities and redirect its focus on productive activities to infrastructure development and infrastructure spending. The Department was hard at work, seeing that the President had redirected the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI) from being just a public works department to an infrastructure-focused department.

The Department had started by ensuring that it worked on the infrastructure plan. The Department did not have an infrastructure plan and skills pipeline in the past. The systems that were there were more controlled through National Treasury. The Department had now had to reconfigure how it did its work and introduce new methodologies. Hence, when they talked about the South African infrastructure investment plan, they talked about this plan focusing on short, medium and long term approaches, invigorating the construction industry and creating employment opportunities in it.

The Chairperson acknowledged the presence of Mr Alec Moemi, Acting Director-General, DPWI, and congratulated Professor Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, Head of Infrastructure South Africa (ISA), on obtaining his professorship.

National Infrastructure Maintenance Strategy

Prof Ramokgopa said the presentation was split into two parts. The first part would be reflecting on the National Infrastructure Maintenance Strategy. The existing infrastructure had been neglected, and was crumbling. The replacement costs were exponentially higher than the maintenance cost. It was important to introduce and maintain a degree of discipline in how the Department protected its assets to extend the asset’s lives.

The second part shared a reconfiguration of the public sector infrastructure system. There was an introduction of a method on how to evaluate and appraise a project. This was an internationally recognised approach on how to do project preparation appraisal. It was called a five-case model and was used by G20 countries. There was a lot that still needed to be resolved, with many players such as National Treasury, but discussions on reconciling the infrastructure ecosystem were being held. The emerging consensus was that ISA must create a single pipeline of projects in the country.

Mr Nkosana Kubeka, Deputy-Director General: Small Harbours, Coastal Properties Development and Special Projects, DPWI, provided a background to the adoption of NIMS. When NIMS was approved, the key focus areas were on:

  • Strengthening the regulatory framework right from planning and budgeting to maintaining the public infrastructure.
  • Assisting various institutions that dealt with infrastructure with non-financial resources.
  • Developing a maintenance industry.
  • Strengthening monitoring, evaluation, and reporting of maintenance of public infrastructure.

The DPWI at the time was tasked with implementing NIMS with the support of the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB), which provided the programme management for the NIMS rollout.

There was a realisation that all spheres of government and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were managing a major asset portfolio. There was poor maintenance of the infrastructure. The key challenges that undermined the maintenance included the fact that:

  • There was an incomplete immovable asset register, which was sometimes non-existent.
  • The focus was on providing new services and very little focus was on maintenance.
  • All public entities did not have asset management plans.
  • There were very limited budgets to conduct maintenance. Some budgets were not ring-fenced.
  • There was an insufficient skill capacity in the public and private sectors to undertake maintenance. Sufficient skills were not produced, even today.

On the work that had been undertaken, he reported that the DPWI and the CIBD had agreed on the components of work to be undertaken in order to implement NIMS. Seven components were undertaken, resulting in developing a draft of the National Immovable Asset Maintenance Management (NIAMM) framework. The framework encompasses all immovable assets under the custodianship of the national and provincial Departments of Public Works and Infrastructure, including public buildings, complex facilities and engineering infrastructure.

Ms Mameetse Masemola, Head: Infrastructure Investment, Planning and Oversight, ISA, took the Committee through aspects of the five-case model. She stated that the five-case model was called that because the business case for each infrastructure project would have five elements to it. These included:

  1. The strategic case, which assesses to what extent a project was fit for purpose, the objects of the project and how it responds to national policies and strategies.
  2. The economic case, which assesses whether a project is economically and socially desirable and asks what the opportunity cost is. Under this case, ISA assists project sponsors and project owners in conducting a cost benefit. The economic case rests on that modelling exercise.
  3. The commercial case, where it was important to ensure that the case was robust before the procurement took place. It demonstrated that the requirements would be delivered from a supply perspective. It ensured that there was a detailed procurement strategy, that the proposed contract structure was in place, and that risk was allocated correctly.
  4. The financial case asks where the funding of a project was going to come from. ISA currently finds that a project owner or sponsor would submit a business case to National Treasury, but the funder of the project had not been established. The financial case tries to establish this upfront.
  5. The management case looks at how the project was going to be delivered. It looks at whether the project owner or sponsor had the requisite capacity and skill sets to deliver on this project. This was important, because sometimes projects did not take off because the project owner did not have the capacity to roll out the project.

Prof Ramokgopa stepped in to speak on the project life-cycle when the five case model was used. He said that ISA had the five gates of interrogation which included the early business case, and then the intermediate phase. This was to ensure that a project reached its strategic intent and was consistent with the National Development Plan. The key difference between the five-case model and the private-public partnerships (PPPs) was that the five-case model was a more robust model of assessment. The PPP model did not ask the strategic questions. All it did was assess whether the financing options were consistent with the PPP. The Department was arguing that the primary questions must be asked. The PPP was one of the three financial considerations that were available to finance a project. The five-case model also asked about benefit realisation once a project had been concluded, to assess whether a project had achieved its objectives.

He concluded the presentation by recommending that it was important for the Portfolio Committee to note the NIM journey towards the Framework for Infrastructure Delivery and Procurement Management (FIDPM) and the alignment with the five-case model.

Discussion

Ms S Graham (DA) felt that the more information she received on ISA, the less she understood what it was and what it did. It was fantastic that the case study was being built, and she appreciated all the work that had gone into it. She was concerned that an international G20 methodology that did not speak to the South African context was being adopted. ISA was looking at projects over R1 billion, and there were not masses of that lying around. She was concerned that a project of over R1 billion being presented to ISA might not necessarily be a project that needed this kind of intervention. If one looked at housing, poor people benefited from government housing and wealthy people were able to afford to buy their own houses. The missing middle suffered the most, as they were neither poor nor wealthy enough to facilitate their own housing strategies. A R1 billion project should have the skills and capabilities built within the environment to look into case studies and funding models. The middle cost projects required that level of intervention to get off the ground.

ISA provided a coordination function and currently falls under the DPWI, which paid the cost of it. How did ISA generate income? There would be case models, case studies, and one would bring in brilliant people. She doubted anyone was working for free or that the resources being used were for free. Who was funding the cost of these things? Was any income being recouped as a result or was this just a cost factor for the Department? Was any money being generated anywhere for the service provided? To whom was the money being paid to recover the costs incurred to provide this service?

While ISA was looking at the asset life-cycle scenario, one should start looking at a better way to do maintenance. Maintenance was never an imperative in most budgets. Her concern was that where there was a R1 billion project, what was being done to ensure that there were maintenance structures built into that project case study to ensure public-private partnerships and pure fiscus spending? What were they doing to ensure that the money being invested in that project would see value for money going forward? Was there anything being done about this?

Slide four referred to the artisan skills at the technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges. They did things like bricklaying, but then there was a battle with implementation and construction companies not adequately upskilling these people. There was a need to be developing plumbers and engineering skills. How long did the process of the five-case model take? It was quite an intricate process that required a lot of engagement. Had the Department set a timeframe within which the entire process should take place? 

It was fantastic that assessment reports were being drafted. Who received those assessment reports? Were they revisited? Were they monitored on an ongoing basis or did ISA’s job stop at determining the funding model? Did ISA just handle the coordination until funding, or did it monitor the rest of the project through to finalisation? Through that process, how could one monitor to ensure that there was proper value for the money spent on these projects? All the indicators showed that the rebuilding of Parliament was going to cost in excess of R1 million. News reports had indicated that National Treasury basically did not trust the DPWI to handle to do the rebuilding. The indicators showed that National Treasury was looking at giving money for the reconstruction processes directly to Parliament. Was ISA going to be giving a business case and looking at funding models for the rebuild, given that this fell within the financial area that ISA dealt with?

Ms M Hicklin (DA) said ISA needed to make their presentations more people-friendly so that the questions asked by the Committee could be easier to understand. Having sat through this presentation, she still did not understand how ISA was going to invigorate a construction industry that was on its knees. The economy in South Africa was struggling. When one started talking about construction projects that ISA was going to invigorate that started at R1 billion, the average construction company was going to shut off, because they were nowhere near that level. This Committee should be able to do oversight over all the funding and construction projects. The kind of project delivered today alienated the average person watching this programme. The presentation needed to be more friendly to the average person in the construction industry looking for assistance. There was a need for viable construction projects. This may not necessarily be ISA’s mandate, but ISA needed to offer South African construction companies the hope that that was what it would do.

How many projects had ISA actually facilitated? How many projects had been registered in terms of ISA? How many projects did ISA have on their books since it came into operation in 2019? How many people have worked through ISA’s operations and maintenance guidelines? Where was the funding for these PPPs going to come from? Slide 16 stated that the PPPs were not prescribed. How did construction companies become part of the five-case model framework? She was confused and often unable to respond clearly when people asked her how she works with ISA. This was quite disturbing for her.

ISA received a massive budget from National Treasury, but it was reserved for only exceptionally large projects. The DPWI had to become the economic driver for the infrastructure economy in South Africa. ISA was a big part of this, yet she did not see the invigoration that should be given to the economy. Perhaps this was due to the gap between what ISA did and the Committee’s understanding of what it did. They needed to be able to communicate better.

Mr W Thring (ACDP) said the presentation referred to an inadequate asset register and inadequate maintenance as challenges to infrastructure development. What were ISA and the Department’s involvement in this regard? He and Ms Hicklin had made numerous appeals about the DPWI having an immovable asset register that one was able to use to effectively manage its huge property portfolio. What was ISA’s involvement? Was ISA assisting the Department in terms of fast-tracking the immovable asset register challenges that the Department has? How did ISA see themselves working with other infrastructure-implementing agents like the Independent Development Trust (IDT)? As South Africa was a water-scarce country, was the building of dams and desalination plants part of ISA’s long-term project? Similarly, was it going to be involved in infrastructure development in the country, given the unbundling of Eskom and the development of various infrastructure projects? National Treasury had raised concern over budget overruns in many projects. What systems would ISA put in place to ensure that budget overruns did not occur?

Ms A Siwisa (EFF) asked that the Committee be provided with Circular 77 on the model supply chain management (SCM) policy for infrastructure procurement. It was going to be difficult to know what was being said when the statements were in reference to a circular that the Committee did not have. One could have any kind of model or strategy in place, but consequence management remained a problem in the DPWI. What interventions were going to be made if this model did not work and someone was responsible for not allowing it to work? The presentation did not speak about consequence management. ISA was going to be responsible for coordinating projects that would cost over R1 billion, yet the model did not speak about the interventions that were going to be taken should the projects not go as planned. Any model or presentation made needed to speak about consequence management.

She agreed with other Members that the presentation was very vague and should be explained in layman’s terms. What was the reason for the five-case model? The lack of consequence management and interventions was a problem. The project was titled "Infrastructure 2050." What was going to happen between now and 2050 should the Committee proceed with this model seeing, that there was no reference to consequence management and project management? They all knew that there were going to be people blocking the project because of certain processes not being followed and people not being involved.

The Chairperson said she appreciated the presentation, though it was high-level. She appreciated that it had indicated that ISA would assess the value for money achieved through the infrastructure projects. She raised concern over the process of the five-case model. Were those the stages before the project itself? Were they talking about years or months? One of the challenges facing South Africa was that it could take three years to finish a three-month project. ISA had five stages before the final implementation of the project. How many months and days were there in the respective phases? How was the Framework for Infrastructure Procurement and Delivery Management going to prevent corruption? Corruption was one of the reasons why the completion of projects was delayed. How was this framework going to ensure that corruption was prevented and services were delivered? How did this framework work? Were all the project management teams in the directorate going to follow this? Would they be assessing whether there had been value for money? Were the project management teams aware that due diligence would need to be done before payment was signed off? It had been previously raised that the PPP regulations need to be amended. How far was the review of the PPP regulations?

Ms S Van Schalkwyk (ANC) asked what effect ISA and this five-case model would have. Did ISA have a solid enough impact on social infrastructure projects like courts and police stations? Could one assume that having ISA inside the Department would have an impact on achieving excellence in construction project management in the Property Management Trading Entity (PMTE)? Could the Committee receive a report that mapped the key pillars and components of what was called the maintenance industry? There was some sort of review of NIMS underway to ensure proper implementation -- what was the timeline for this review?

She raised concern over the fact that research had shown that it was more cost-effective to provide planned maintenance on assets instead of waiting for the deterioration of the building and the equipment. Properties which did not comply with legislation may result in the government facing litigation by communities and building occupants. What was the plan to ensure that planned maintenance was prioritised against emergency or unplanned maintenance?

The Chairperson acknowledged the presence of Minister Patricia de Lille in the meeting.

DPWI's response

Acting DG Moemi responded to the issue of what problem the model was trying to solve, and said the true measure of the success of a project was whether it was achievable. The predetermined outcomes were achieved on time and within budget. These two measures were currently lacking in the South African construction landscape within the public sector. This was one of the issues the five-case model was trying to solve. There had been a number of major projects in the past, and many of them remained incomplete. Part of the systemic failures was related to planning and unexpected delays in the projects. The five-case model sought to respond to this by introducing a number of gateways for project approval processes and the conceptualisation of projects.

On what value the ISA added to these issues, he said it was the capacity of the state to harness and bring the necessary synergy between all the different role players within the public sector. All the different ingredients for a successful project exist in different spheres and entities. The kitchen was ready for this to be cooked, but there had not been a proper chef. With that analogy, ISA would come in as a chef to look at all the ingredients and assess when to put what in, and would be armed with the five-case model as a recipe. The model would bring a credible pipeline of these projects and subject them to a stress test to ensure they had been thoroughly prepared by the time and money invested in them.

Project preparation had been an important value add that had been missing in infrastructure rollout in the country. ISA harnessed all the skill sets and expertise across the public and private sectors to ensure that the projects were bankable and received funding. ISA then had to monitor all of this. When studies were done, a project's credibility was proven, and finance was provided, ISA then had follow-up work to do. ISA worked with project sponsors by providing them with the necessary support to bring the projects into the construction phase.

ISA also provided support for large-scale procurement for complex projects. It sought to close the gap here. Government had been paying for this gap through project delays and project penalties. If the model was implemented to the letter, this would lead to better procurement, contracting conditions, and project management outcomes. ISA was never designed to be a project implementer. However, they had heard Ms Graham’s concerns, and could assure her that they had allocated the Refurbish, Operate, and Transfer (ROT) programme and Strategic Integrated Project (SIP) 28 to ISA, where ISA was a catalyst and implementing agent in behalf of the Department. It was the first time ISA was being pushed to that mandate since its establishment to fill the vacuum in the PMTE. On whether one would see an improvement at the PMTE, he replied that ISA’s implementation mandate would be strengthened gradually as it rolled this out and made an impact. This would lead to seeing more and more of the PMTE projects being supported by ISA. Its interface and accountability had been proclaimed and gazetted as part of the national macro-organisation of government.

ISA belonged to the DPWI. Its primary funding for administration came from the DPWI and was accountable to the Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure. It also prepared projects for the Ministerial Infrastructure Development Committee. ISA acted as a key player by submitting its own reports on its own monitoring. It was also attached as a secretariat to the Presidential Infrastructure Coordination Committee. The system was not perfect, and there was no ready-made template, but the Department was now feeling comfort that it should adopt the five-case model. It was a foreign model, but they had seen it as a proven model that had been stress tested under different conditions. There had been discussions and workshops to customise the model to local capacity constraints. Amendments were being made in some gateways to bring in the required capacity to support all the stages of the five-case model.

Ms Masemola responded on why the ISA dealt with projects over R1 billion, saying that there was a gap between the infrastructure required now and the infrastructure required in 2030 to 2050, looking at the budget allocation that National Treasury would possibly make. Infrastructure investment had to close that gap and meet the targets set in the National Development Plan related to infrastructure. Every year, there was a need to bring 16 to 20 major projects to the market. This was in addition to the normal projects, such as building schools and rolling out social infrastructure. This was all part of reviving the construction industry, and required ISA to utilise the resources it had at the moment to close the infrastructure investment gap and to invest in the preparation of these major infrastructure projects and programmes.

On who paid for the costs, a significant amount of support was provided to project owners and sponsors. ISA currently does not charge a fee for this. It worked with the resources and the R148 million budget that it has, and worked closely with multilateral development banks and development finance institutions. Private sector professionals were seconded to ISA, and were paid to work with it to develop these business cases.

The length of the timeframes of the five-case mode depended on factors such as the sector, the project's complexity, and the project's size. The requirement on ISA’s side was that when the project was registered with it, they would work with the project owner and deliver on the early business case, which included both the scoping exercises and the conclusion of the pre-feasibility reports. It was required that this be done within six months or less. When one moved into the bankability phase and financial close, that was when all the aforementioned dependent factors came into play, as this was when the actual financial structuring of these projects was done. Bankability and the financial close formed part of the intermediate phase of the project. They could take any time between six to twelve months to conclude, depending on the aforementioned factors. ISA worked hard with the project owners to bring in the required skill sets to progress the projects.

She had taken note of the issues raised by Ms Hicklin, and took counsel about making their presentations less technical and more understandable to the layman in future presentations.

The Department had a knowledge exchange programme with the Infrastructure and Projects Authority in the United Kingdom. There was a document called the "Construction Pipeline" that they published every year, in which they published all the infrastructure projects and programmes where funding decisions had been made and procurement would take place in a particular financial year. It had found this a useful tool to engage directly with construction companies and the construction industry and help them gear themselves up for all the projects coming into the market. The Department was working internally and engaging with several stakeholders to work on having a similar report that would signal the construction pipeline to the market.

She said ISA would provide the information on how many projects ISA had facilitated and registered, because the list was long.

Referring to desalination, water infrastructure and energy projects, she said that two desalination projects in the Eastern Cape formed part of the ISA project pipeline. The pipeline project development committee was steering project meetings with Eskom every second week to look at the Eskom pipeline. They were starting to see the fruits of that particular setup. A significant number of energy projects had been registered with ISA, and it dealt with Eskom energy and water infrastructure projects. They formed part of ISA’s pipeline. This information would be made available to the Members.

Dr Hubert Joynt, Transport Infrastructure Specialist, ISA, thanked the Committee for the pertinent questions. On the technical evaluation, he said it needs to be ensured that the standard of evaluation and project submissions were at the appropriate level. He emphasised the importance of detailed evaluation by putting it in numbers. The current underspending of allocated public sector infrastructure funds sat at between R42 billion and about R90 billion per annum. This told one that the proper management case was not in place to deliver the project. This was why ISA had the five-case model, which included management focused on delivery and the management of projects. This also showed that the wrong project had been finalised, because not all the different cases had been done to ensure smooth delivery of a project. ISA needed to reverse this situation.

The public sector infrastructure funding allocation was between R200 billion to R250 billion per year. An underspending of up to R90 billion was a significant portion of the allocated spending. The Centre of Excellence also acquired certain macroeconomic models for different provinces to ensure appropriate economic information was used. The problem that had occurred in the past was that many of the submissions made use of a national model. The national model was not always relevant to a specific province. The economic multipliers for a rural province such as Limpopo differed from the national model. Specific purpose-built provincial models ensured improved accuracy.

ISA and National Treasury had standardised specific inputs into project evaluations, such as the discount rate that impacts one's net present values and returns on a project. It was not standardised in the past, but is standardised now at 10%. When one got different projects from water or transport, at least they used the same discount rate so one could now compare inter-sectoral projects. This year, ISA supported ten different project sponsors by doing the cost benefit studies and the macro-economic studies for submission into the budget facility for infrastructure, to ensure that it started helping those organisations that did not always have the technical know-how. ISA had also assisted on a desalination plant. He re-emphasised that in terms of the National Infrastructure Plan, water, energy, freight, transport and ICT were the main focus areas.

His colleagues at the DPWI could give more details on recovery in the construction sector, but the construction industry recovery plan was currently being formulated. ISA provided input about that so there was already a plan to ensure the sector's recovery.

On the importance of a management case and the lack of consequence management, he replied that the good thing about the management case was that it was purpose-built around a project. It included risk management and processes to deal with non-delivery. Consequence management could be built into the management case to ensure delivery took place as it should.

Mr Khubeka, DPWI, responded to the maintenance-related questions. He stated that in alignment with the NIMS and the NIAMM framework, the deputy director who dealt with facilities management had started the process of reviewing the Department’s maintenance policy and strategy. This had been supported by the ministry. The approach would be finalised soon, and the Department could share the report with the Committee at a later stage. The key to the strategy was ensuring that within their maintenance budget, between 70% and 80% was geared towards preventative maintenance. Anything from 20% to 30% would focus on reactive maintenance. What the Department had done as part of aligning infrastructure delivery management services (IDMS) and the standard operating procedures, was to finalise a draft circular for which the implementation would be 1 April 2023. That circular aligned the processes that had been spoken about earlier.

They were also considering the fact that there was a need to put the Department’s own project managers through the five-case model training. As part of project planning and feasibility studies, there was a need for the management case to anchor a project towards making sure that the basics of planning and the requisite skill sets were infused within the management case. This was a work in progress.

On a point raised by Ms Graham, he replied that as part of the new standard operating procedures, the Department was working with the planning unit to review its user asset management plans and custodian asset management plans so that they did not simply become compliance documents, but rather documents that were used for planning and budgeting purposes. They had ensured they could bring a report of some of the artisans and engineers they had put through their pipeline projects. They had built an in-house engineering capacity for some of the infrastructure projects so that they could maybe provide a report to the Committee on their artisan programme and engineering capability. The capacity of their project managers to be able to use this five-case model was something that the Department was considering.

Responding to Mr Thring, he said mitigating against a budget overrun was part of risk mitigation in the management case. That would be linked to consequence management. If all the issues upfront had been finalised and agreed to in terms of the deliverables, it was important that project managers, in line with contract management, knew the consequences of projects overrunning. This would be infused into the training.

Regarding social facilitation, he replied that Cabinet had approved the framework, and the Department had worked with ISA and the technical advisory panels to develop templates and tools which would be rolled out throughout the infrastructure spheres of government. The Department has since presented this to its technical Ministers and Members of Executive Council (MINMEC). There was a work stream that was finalising all the inputs from the provinces. They would be circulating those social facilitations templated within the next month or two, because they made sure that the community would take ownership of the project right from the planning phase. They had linked this social facilitation to the district development model (DDM) so that they talked about the one plan per district or local municipality. The Department’s social facilitation framework would also be rolled out very soon. These were some of the initiatives harnessing the DPWI's strategies to ensure that they aligned all these challenges and implemented the necessary interventions.

He also noted the complaints that the Department’s presentations should be less technical and more understandable by laymen.

Deputy Minister Kiviet said she would round up the responses.

On adopting a G20-approved methodology to tackle problems, she was of the belief that the Committee should contextualise the local environment because the country did not have most of the analytic high range skills. That contributed to the Department finding itself in an infrastructure space where projects were not finished on time. One tended to turn a blind eye to the fact that when they talked to their council about skills development and transformation in the industry, those were the skills that they needed. They could not behave as though they still lived in an enclosed South Africa. South Africa was part of the globe, so they had to move with the rest of the world. If they did not do so, they ran the risk of remaining on the lowest levels of development in the country.

ISA's programme for training a number of the DPWI’s personnel to be management, spoke to skills development and ensuring that the skills that were lacking in the Department were being created. They may be utilising other countries' seeds, but the essence was that they needed to have those skills and up their game to compete. They must be able to produce internationally competitive people with their own human capital. She made a plea to the Committee that the five-case model training of the Department’s own personnel was one programme that must be supported.

One way to simplify the confusion on ISA was to look at it as government's own high-end consultants who would be innovative in their approach to analysing the projects that came through to ensure their success. ISA’s role was to guide, advise, assist and support various government projects and ensure that the planning and execution of those projects were in line with international standards. They were bringing the high-end skills in government that were necessary for huge projects that impacted the economic and social standing of the country.

Minister De Lille said she had not seen National Treasury’s comments in reference to the DPWI. However, what she could comment on was that when the Department presented on 9 September to the joint finance monitoring committee of Parliament, it had been agreed in that committee that a technical troika, consisting of the secretary to Parliament and representatives from National Treasury and the DPWI, should be established. That technical committee must still report back to the joint finance management committee, and only then could the Department receive guidance on the way forward. That was currently the official position. The DPWI would then hear the views of the Members of Parliament. After all, it had been agreed that Parliament would make the final decision.

She put it on record that she was of the view that if the comments of Ms Graham were true, it was uncalled for to cast dispersions on the DPWI. Many things were wrong, but these things needed to be dealt with within the structures of government. She would follow the comments up. They would wait for the Speaker to convene the meeting so that the technical troika could report back to Parliament.

The Chairperson thanked the DPWI’s delegation for responding to the Committee’s questions. She was thankful that a plan was in place to address its concerns. The Committee’s ultimate job was to ensure that services were delivered to the people of South Africa, but the reality was that there was a serious infrastructure development backlog. She wished the Department well in sourcing funding for its projects.

The meeting was adjourned.

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