FAQ

Engineers for Africa (E4A) – is a company that was established in 2009 by two Engineers who had held senior executive positions in the technology and engineering industry. They had independently recognised the need for coaching, mentoring and training of young engineers and other technical staff who were entering the workplace in order to ensure they attained professional capability and made a meaningful impact in their organisations as quickly as possible.

E4A offers two types of programs.

This program is aimed specifically at technical staff wishing to develop their overall technical skills in a structured program over a two to three year period. Such staff may be new in the technical workplace, candidate professional engineers, or experienced staff, who wish to refresh their skills through the program. Candidates will also participate in the program with a view to enhancing their operational expertise in order to attain a direct bottom line impact through efficiency and wastage management of ongoing projects.

These programs are also aimed at technical staff wishing to develop their overall technical skills, but will be typically driven by a specific company program need such as a technical selling and marketing program or a research and development focussed program. This will likely still be a structured program over a two to three year period. Such staff may be new in the technical workplace, or more experienced Again the program is preferably based around specific projects in the work environment that will have a tangible bottom line impact.

Experience gained over many years of employing and developing young engineers and other technical staff has shown that significant skills, especially those linked to practical operational expertise and broader professional engineering requirements, are lacking when engineers leave tertiary institutions. These often take a long time and an osmosis process, or in some cases never, in order to be learned and applied. The programs aim to fast track the process of development to be advantageous to both the engineers themselves, as well as the organisations they work for.

Professional development has two components. The first are the key areas defined by ECSA and other technical institutes for professional registration, and the second are the skills that are learned through experience to ensure that the engineer makes a positive sustainable impact to his workspace and his broader environment.

Participants/candidates register on the site and then attend the first set of lectures.
Thereafter they submit ongoing monthly reports to their mentors via the site, enabling a portfolio to be held on the site. This can ultimately be used for submission to an appropriate institute such as ECSA, if so desired. The report submissions are also fundamental to all development aspects that mentors provide as they are a ‘hard’ experience record and enable progress monitoring by the mentors with all the advice and guidance from mentors then flowing from these reports.
The further lecture-workshops held later in the program also broaden the general technical experience of the candidates.
The core process, in addition to the lectures, is the mentoring of candidates. Monthly tele-workshops and feedback on monthly reports are held between mentors and mentees (candidates).
On conclusion of a two or three year program (candidate’s choice) a certificate of completion is issued.

Programs are aimed at all technical persons including young engineers who will typically have been in the workplace for less than five years and who are in the process of attaining professional registration or are moving towards their first promotion. This does not preclude others from taking part in the programs, or possibly attending specific events if required.

Mentors are skilled and experienced persons who have gone through a training program to enable them to provide professional and consistent support to the candidates.

Mentors are usually supplied by E4A but mentors from the customer organisation can be used if they have an appropriate background and have gone through the training program.

Mentors are trained by E4A or one of our alliance partners.

There are two types of courses held – quarterly first level courses as detailed below and additional or second level courses for knowledge building – also detailed below.

Quarterly first level courses
These courses are related to the new participants in each quarter and cover:
Professionalism and Orientation to the E4A programs
Technical Problem Solving
Technical Communication and Report Writing

Additional or second level courses

These courses are related to valuable general training of technical subjects such as general engineering practices, materials selection, tank design and risk management.

Programs normally last for two or three years and can be selected either at the end of the second year or on commencement. Three years is preferable when candidates are using the program to develop their final submissions to ECSA or other registration bodies where portfolio requirements often extend to three years.

Candidates on the program are required to spend two days on the level one lectures or workshops and will then need to commit to their own time, or where company sponsored in work time, for the monthly report preparation and interface with the allocated mentor. The time selected and budgeted is individual driven as the work preparation and reporting is for own career development and candidates should plan accordingly.

Projects that candidates must work on during the program should preferably be the existing projects from their normal work routine. If possible, projects that have a tangible and measurable bottom line impact should be identified.
E4A also assists with proposed projects or ideas for projects through the mentors.

The program can support as many projects as required but typically only one project is worked on at once. The projects must be reported on monthly by the candidates.

Management involvement may initially occur simply with support for a candidate to go on the program, or in direct internal mentoring supporting the candidate’s participation on the program. Internal mentoring may be simply back up and support for the candidate and external mentoring driving the program and detail report reviews. For example reports should definitely be reviewed first by the E4A appointed mentor and then only submitted to the internal mentor for reasons of professional presentation.

Any organisation that has young engineers or technical staff and is interested in their professional development in order to ensure that they get a real benefit from their human resources as quickly as possible.

The professional development program is ideal for a project organisation, especially when charge out rates are linked to professional registration. It is in the interests of the organisation to get their engineers registered as quickly as possible.

The program can be implemented at any organisation that has a minimum of 10 candidates. If an organisation has less then ten candidates they will need to attend our quarterly programs for the training and workshops, although the project mentorship will still be for projects linked to a specific candidate.

The programs are national. Candidates will need to attend the lectures and workshops in Gauteng or special regional arrangements where adequate numbers can be co-ordinated. Implementation in other countries in the region will also be considered.

The programs are for all engineering disciplines and any technical staff who feel they can participate usefully in the skills development provided by E4A.

Participants in the efficiency programs do not need to be candidates for registration.

It is strongly recommended that the programs are incorporated into existing development programs where possible.

You can join in an existing program in individual capacity or as part of a company sponsored set of candidates.

An estimated bottom line impact of between 3% and 5% can be worked on for productivity, efficiency driven, or focused programs. This is dependent on the specific projects worked, but overall, especially in the professional development program, the underlying benefit to the organisation is significantly more in effective decision-making and problem resolution. For project organisations that charge rates based on professional registration a measurable impact is made on registration.

They are many benefits to the program including:

• Cost saving, waste reduction and specific savings driven projects

• Skills retention

• Significantly improved problem solving and solution implementation

• Significantly improved efficiencies

• Higher charge out rates

This will need to be done on a case-by-case basis and will depend on the specific projects chosen. Where possible a financial impact will be measured and E4A work to ensure cost savings programs are set and driven by the candidates. The need for economic drivers in any project or program is emphasized by E4A.

There are three levels of participation that determine the costs.

1. Individual private candidates will pay R3000 per annum on registration or re-registration.

2. Individual candidates funded by a company, will pay R3500 per annum on registration or re-registration. The R500 premium is a small contribution to E4A running costs.

3. Formal company sponsorship of R20 000 per annum, which entitles the sponsor company to send up to five candidates on the programs and enables an active promotion on the internet site and at E4A events.

There is no direct link to ECSA, but through the participation of the relevant institutions the requirements of ECSA are generally incorporated into the program.