Opportunities Provided for Walter Sisulu University Engineering Students

The South African National Roads Agency SOC Limited (SANRAL) and the Faculty of Engineering at the Walter Sisulu University recently held a successful and engaging lecture at the Butterworth campus, on advances made in roads engineering, where students learned from seasoned and young engineers.

This is the 3rd university lecture undertaken by SANRAL across the country this year, where it unpacked career opportunities and shared the current challenges associated with building a road network. Young engineers from SANRAL shared their practical experiences and the challenges which they had to overcome.

Professor Wellington Didibhulu Thwala, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, was full of praise for the collaboration with SANRAL and reassured the graduates that they will learn from the roads agency. “We have reconfigured the faculty in terms of new programmes. We are looking at moving from Diploma to Advanced Diploma, Honours, a Master’s degree and PhD. Our collaboration with SANRAL will assist in this regard. There are two areas which we want to focus on within civil engineering: material science and transport science. We want them to fall under our envisaged Centre of Excellence.”

Mbulelo Peterson, SANRAL Southern Region Manager, took the audience through the work which SANRAL is doing in the Eastern Cape, from designs and current projects to allocated budgets. At about 5 700km, the province has the longest national road network, while South Africa has the 11th longest road network in the world.

“Every year we give money to the University of Cape Town and the University of Free State because we work together. It is high time we worked with Walter Sisulu University to ensure that SANRAL is more relevant to this institution. We work with the Department of Transport to change the face of the Eastern Cape by taking over some of the provincial roads,” said Peterson.

He emphasised the importance of road maintenance as asset preservation. “If you don’t do maintenance, you find that you pay 18 times the amount you would have paid. Planning, management and decision-making are in-house functions that do not get outsourced by SANRAL.”
He lamented the non-operation of some overload control centres which should be manned 24 hours per day. “We don’t have issues with trucks but with overloaded trucks that are destroying our roads,” said Peterson.

Two young engineers captivated the audience, which consisted predominantly of students, with stories of their professional journey at SANRAL. Nasiphi Dinga, from Mthatha, is now a Project Manager on the flood stabilisation project on the R61 outside Port St Johns.

“I received my professional registration with the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA). I started with design experience which was done in-house at SANRAL. It was followed with supervision experience on the R61 in Mthatha, but my highlight was taking over a road project on the R75 from Jansenville to Graaff Reinet, which created many jobs for rural, unemployed people,” said Dinga. “Students must ensure that they get their B. Tech as we have lots of opportunities in the Eastern Cape.”

Siphosethu Tunywa, from Mdantsane, said SANRAL covered all his B. Tech studies and he was part of the Technical Excellence Academy in Gqeberha. He has worked on projects such as the R62 near Joubertina, the N3 and N2 Belstone/Breidbach Interchanges, and is moving to the R63 Bhisho to Kei Road project.

“If you are fortunate in construction, you can also do your designs. I was fortunate because of my background in flood estimation. The graduate programme motivates us to register with ECSA and I am planning to submit my application soon,” said Tunywa.
The issue of internship for young graduates dominated the discussion as students were eager to know how experiential training can be secured for professional development.