There is an awareness that capacity in the built environment in South Africa should be improved. While there have been many excellent initiatives to address capacity, change has been slow. Therefore, there is a need to identify strategies that enable more rapid, broader and sustained change. Here are some ideas.

A shared understanding of the built environment

Developing a shared understanding of the built environment would help define the important role that this plays in achieving the development objectives outlined in the Constitution, the National Development Plan and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Rights to education, housing, health and equality cannot be fulfilled if schools, clinics and housing are not available, affordable, safe and inclusive. Sustainable development will only happen when neighbourhoods promote businesses that create local employment, are walkable, have high-quality, affordable housing, education, health, and recreation facilities and are based on sustainable food, energy, water, sanitation and waste systems.

Having a shared understanding and vision of the characteristics required in built environments helps ensure that development is focused and the capacity required to achieve this, is valued. This understanding and vision must be shared by government, industry, the built environment sector and the general public and could be set out in a policy.

An enabling environment for capacity development

To be effective, the role of professional and technical built environment capacity needs to be recognised. Planning, designing, constructing and operating built environments is complex and requires specialist training and experience. Employing people without the required skills and experience results in poor decisions being made, projects being delivered late and over budget, poor quality built environments and many opportunities for achieving development objectives being missed.

It is, therefore, important that people with the right experience and skills are employed for built environment positions. Organisational structure and support must be in place to ensure that built environment employees are effective and productive in their work. In a rapidly changing environment, built environment employees should also have access to expert guidance, mentorship, training and continuous professional development that enable them to make the right decisions, keep abreast of developments and progress in their careers. This could be supported through greater awareness and client and employer guides.

Coordinated and prioritised capacity development

Achieving built environment capacity development requires a coordinated effort from different roleplayers. The government, the private sector, and professional and industry bodies need to use a shared vision and understanding of the built environment to define current and emerging capacity needs. Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs), clients, employers and industry need to identify and address specific capacity gaps to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the sector.

These inputs can be used to set out prioritised capacity needs for the sector. These may include urgent basic aspects such as project management, budgeting, procurement, contract management, health and safety, maintenance, universal design, and facilities management to emerging and more complex needs in areas such as sustainable urban and building design, climate adaptation and resilience, smart technologies, renewable energy systems and microgrids, rainwater harvesting, grey water and ecological sanitation, sustainable urban drainage, labour intensive construction and circular economy approaches.

A prioritised, funded list of built environment capacity needs could be used to coordinate the development of updated and new responsive training and capacity development programmes by universities, TVET colleges and private training providers. Detailed monitoring, evaluation and quality control measures would ensure training programmes achieved specified impacts and the scale and nature of the change required.