Expand local companies’ engineering capacity to speed up economic growth

To drive infrastructure, manufacturing, and technological developments, as projected by Vision 2030, the country will need to boost its engineering and building capacity.

We have been challenged by the Chinese who have taken on a major and visible role in the Kenyan construction industry and who appear to deliver value, quality and timeliness on public and private projects. It is timely to embark on rapid development of our home grown capacity to “engineer and construct” for 2030.

Last week I attended an engineers stakeholders forum (regulators, government, academia, consultants, private sector) organised by Engineers Registration Board (ERB) to discuss future engineering capacity requirements. It was clear that Kenya has insufficient number of professional engineers needed to match our future development needs.

Currently Kenya has about 6,100 graduate engineers, of which only 1,500 are registered professionals . The ratio of graduate engineers per population of 1,000 people is about 0.2 for Kenya. Comparable data puts the ratio at 0.7 for China, 1.8 for Japan, and 2.0 for United Kingdom. These statistics point to an urgent challenge for the country.

It is not just engineers that Kenya needs but also construction contractors with sufficient financial capacity and credible performance records to professionally undertake major projects.

The “twin” laws enacted recently, for example the Engineers Act 2011 and the National Construction Authority Act 2011 sufficiently provide legal , regulatory and institutional framework to develop professional engineering and construction contractor capacity for the many public and private projects ahead of us. Cases of collapsing buildings , prematurely failing roads and recent petroleum infrastructure fires are examples of insufficient professional engineering input; negligent contractors; or sheer absence of regulatory enforcement . It is understood that the World Bank and other multilateral funding agencies, keen on ascertaining value for their disbursed project money, are now planning to fund capacity building for professional engineers and contractors.

Specifically, the new Engineers Act 2011 makes it legally mandatory to have only registered “professional engineers” undertake engineering tasks in both public and private sectors. Fasttracking development and conversion of graduate engineers into professional engineers seems to be the key challenge.

The immediate task at hand according to the ERB is to ensure that graduate engineers already working or are in the job market are facilitated and motivated to be registered as professional engineers; and that newly- graduated engineers are immediately entered into an internship programme that will within reasonable time (two to three years) earn them registration.

The internship programme proposed by ERB mirrors closely the graduate doctors who have to intern for a year before earning a licence to practice ; and law graduates who attend Kenya School of Law to qualify to practice.

This graduate engineer internship programme which could be rolled out as early as this year, initially targets mechanical, civil, electrical, chemical and agricultural engineers, with the other engineering disciplines joining later. Key partners for the success of this programme will be the users of engineers (industry and public entities) who will be expected to provide training slots, coaching and supervision for the interns.

It was quite interesting to note comments from professors of engineering at the forum.

Classes according to the dons, are too large (as many as 150 students in a lecture hall ) and lecturer effectiveness gets lost due to the “crowd” factor. Teaching equipment is either obsolete or not enough for proper engineering training. There is also the need to harmonise the curricula and examination processes across all universities to ensure that uniform and high standards are achieved.

These are issues need to be addressed to ensure that the quality of graduate engineers from our universities meets minimum thresholds that it reflect international best practices, for in deed the engineers we produce should be able to compete in the regional and international job markets.

It is not just engineers that we should be thinking about. We need professional technician cadres in every industry, and these will also require a fast tracked master plan to develop. It is encouraging to see the Ministry of Higher Education proposing far reaching reforms that will address national capacity for science, technology and innovation.

Kenya has major developments lined up (upstream oil and gas; Konza project; LAPSSET infrastructure; mining and modern rail systems) which call for specialised engineering expertise to be planned and developed.

For the engineering and construction industries, we need to acknowledge that the challenge of over-reliance on foreign construction firms is real. After nearly 50 years of independence; we should have achieved sufficient capacity to professionally execute most of our construction projects.

To aspire to become “economic tigers” we must have the engineering capacity to innovate, construct and manufacture so as to create wealth that makes us a middle income nation.

Mr Wachira is the director, Petroleum Focus Consultants
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