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Last Meeting of the SAICE Board of Technicians and Technologists

Posted on: Wednesday, 31 August 2005, 03:01 CDT

On 13 April 2005 SAICE's Board of Technicians and Technologists (BTT) held its last meeting. In accordance with the amended SAICE constitution, as approved by the SAICE Council in October 2004, BTT was to be disbanded and SAICE membership categories would no longer differentiate between professionally registered engineers, technicians and technologists. It was fitting that the last meeting coincided with the inauguration of SAICE's own building in Thornhill Office Park in Midrand later the same day, heralding a new future for all SAICE members.

The last BTT meeting brought to a satisfactory end the long and dedicated road travelled by civil engineering technicians and technologists to gain due recognition and establishment within the civil engineering fraternity. During the sixties and seventies, and before that, the role and status of civil engineering technicians, as well as the content and quality of their academic and practical training, were ill defined. There was a need for a body that would address these issues, would study the implications of eventual legal registration, and would develop and adopt a professional code of conduct. The South African Institute of Civil Engineering Technicians (SAICET) was therefore formed on 12 November 1974 with the encouragement and assistance of SAICE. From August 1988 SAICET also included civil engineering technologists.

SAICET witnessed and/or participated in a number of the historic changes that took place within the engineering profession in the late seventies, eighties and early nineties. Not the least of these was establishing an appropriate definition of a technician, especially in the light of misconceptions at the time. SAICET was consequently actively engaged in obtaining the official seal of professional recognition through registration under the Proposed Amendment of the Professional Engineer Act 81 of 1968. Without this amendment, Act 81 only provided for the registration of Professional Engineers and Engineers-in-Training. On 3 March 1978 notification of the proposed Amendment Bill was published in the Government Gazette. SAICET also participated in the formation of multi-disciplinary vocational societies representing engineering technicians and technologists, such as the Association of Societies Representing Engineering Technicians (ASRET) and the South African Association of Registrable Engineers and Technologists (SAARET), as well as the respective Boards of Control for Registered Technicians and Technologists. SAICET furthermore witnessed the replacement of the South African Council of Professional Engineers (SACPE) and its three Boards of Control by the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA), through the Engineering Profession of South Africa Act 114 of 1990, as the sole controlling registering body for engineering.

At the last meeting of the SAICE Board of Technicians and Technologists

Through the years there had always existed friendly relations between SAICET and SAICE. Around 1988 the two institutions began negotiating about possible formal affiliation. At the time SAICET members were invited to become involved in the activities of the SAICE Technical Divisions. This mutual recognition eventually culminated in a formal merger between the two institutions in January 1994, thereby creating a single powerful body and home for all members of the civil engineering profession. SAICE appropriately changed its name to reflect that fact, becoming the South African Institution of Civil Engineering.

The SAICE Board of Technicians and Technologists (BTT) safeguarded the interests of this group within the SAICE structure. BTT continued administering the various annual Best Student Awards and overseeing the administration of the bursary scheme, SPEBS, started by SAICET in March 1992. BTT members also began serving on SAICE standing committees and gradually became part of the fibre of the Institution, to the extent that in 2003 Faried Allie became the first technologist member to serve as president of SAICE.

Unfortunately, despite the goodwill created by the merger, the different membership categories for engineers, technicians and technologists still caused a feeling of being discriminated against, and many discussions over the years focused on this issue. The unhappiness was eventually effectively addressed through the October 2004 amendment to the SAICE constitution, which led to the logical disbandment of BTT during its last meeting in April this year.

At that historic last meeting, it was decided that a small informal panel would continue looking after the interests of technicians and technologists. It was also decided that BTT members currently serving on ECSA accreditation panels would ensure that appropriate technician and technologist appointments be made to these panels as and when required. It was furthermore agreed that the Best Student Awards would in future be handled by the SAICE Education and Training Department, while the administration of SPEBS would be taken over by Marthelene Buckle, who works for SAICE on a contract basis.

Mike Deeks, SAICE 2005 president, thanked BTT for its valued contribution towards the unifying of the civil engineering profession and congratulated the board on the measure of transformation that it had attained. During the opening of SAICE's new building later that day, the ribbon was fittingly cut by Mike Deeks as SAICE president and Brian Holdridge as last chairman of the now nostalgically historic BTT.

Text Verlene de Koker

Acknowledgements Ben Pauw, Danie Paulsen

Copyright The South African Institution of Civil Engineers Jul 2005

Source: Civil Engineering : Magazine of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering

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