The urgent need to develop competent maintenance and reliability personnel is something that does not need to be debated any further. The continent faces huge maintenance backlogs in critical infrastructure for power generation and water supply, which are barely functioning or, in some cases, not functioning at all.
What is needed is decisive action in skills development and training. But what course of action?
Machinery Maintenance Matters hears from the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) about the approach that can be employed to bridge the widening gap between theoretical knowledge and practical experience in engineering and associated disciplines.
In different countries across the continent, there are various bodies mandated with oversight of qualifications in specific disciplines. In South Africa, the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) accredits engineering programmes to ensure that graduates from accredited programmes have the foundational engineering knowledge, analytical skills and scientific principles required for practice.
Nivashnee Naidoo, ECSA’s Manager for Accreditation and Training, relates the organisation’s registration system approach: “The skills development and educational requirement is built on the premise that theoretical knowledge acquired at university or a related institution must be integrated with structured workplace experience before professional competence can be demonstrated. This is regardless of registration category.”
The gap is a necessary developmental stage
In the current economic environment, there is a huge spotlight on the gap that exists between theoretical knowledge and practical experience, with views in some discussions being alarmist. But ECSA regards this gap as a necessary developmental stage rather than a deficit, Naidoo explains. “We address the gap between education and practice through candidate registration, competency-based assessments and professional reviews during the registration process.”
Bridging the gap
To bridge this gap, ECSA introduced the certification of Training Academies (TA). These are organisations, either public or private, can be formally certified by ECSA to provide structured workplace training, mentoring and engineering experience for Candidate Engineers, Candidate Engineering Technologists, Candidate Engineering Technicians and other candidate categories.
“The Training Academies are aimed at addressing a common challenge,” says Naidoo. “What we have realised is that many engineering graduates possess the necessary academic qualifications but struggle to gain the practical experience and mentoring required for professional registration.”
The TA model was specifically created to create high-quality workplace learning opportunities and improve the transition from candidacy to professional registration.
Limited access to training opportunities worrying
What concerns ECSA is the absence of, or limited access to, structured training opportunities to meet the objectives of the TA, mainly bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical experience. This makes it difficult for graduates to accumulate the evidence of competence required for professional growth and registration with ECSA.
What is emerging is a situation where a shortage of workplace opportunities is creating a cycle in which graduates cannot gain experience because employers require experience in the first place.
Creating alternative or additional pathways
To tackle this challenge, ECSA believes Higher Education Institutions, industry and ECSA can all play a part in creating alternative or additional pathways for engineering graduates to gain meaningful practical experience when permanent jobs are scarce.
Naidoo particularly underlines the vital role universities can play in two ways.
Embedding work-integrated learning periods
The first way is for universities to embed longer work-integrated learning periods into engineering programmes. This would allow students to gain practical exposure before graduation. This may reduce the gap between theory and practice and provide graduates with experience that employers value.
Working on real-world problems
Universities could also introduce platforms where students work on real-world problems. These could be simulated but would expose students to authentic engineering decision-making processes.
With respect to maintenance and reliability, Naidoo says engineering education can create learning experiences that expose students more directly to the realities of operating assets, ageing equipment, production pressures, safety risks and complex decision-making.
Engineering-in-training programmes
On its part, industry could assist by offering more graduate development and engineering-in-training programmes. In addition, it could provide structured project opportunities where permanent employment is not an option.
In implementing this approach, Naidoo suggests: “Former industry personnel could act as mentors, with industry mentorship networks created to provide graduates with access to experienced professionals.”
Increasing ECSA-certified Training Academies
From an ECSA perspective, one of the most direct solutions is to increase the number of ECSA-certified Training Academies capable of offering structured training and mentoring outside traditional employment pathways. This could absorb more new graduates, states Naidoo. “Graduates need structured opportunities to develop competence, not merely employment for employment’s sake. The focus must be on creating environments where candidates can demonstrate the competencies required for professional registration.”
ECSA regards the following as some of the practical measures that could be adopted:
- Increasing the number of ECSA-certified Training Academies.
- Establishing a more robust and structured mentoring network.
- Increasing access to structured mentoring and candidacy/engineering-in-training programmes.
- Shifting the focus from traditional employment to competency-based models.
- Strengthening university-industry-ECSA collaborative efforts.
- Encouraging and leveraging public infrastructure projects as developmental platforms.
Creating meaningful opportunities
For the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical experience to be narrowed, all stakeholders in the economy – these include educational institutions, industry and professional bodies – need to work together.
Creating employment opportunities alone won’t suffice, but meaningful opportunities through which engineering graduates can develop and demonstrate competence beyond the classroom.
In the context of maintenance and reliability, what is needed is a stronger pipeline of engineering professionals, who understand the realities of operating, maintaining and managing them in the field, beyond the theory behind assets and systems.
