SAICE’s report cards on the state of infrastructure

In 2006 the South African Institution of Civil Engineering (SAICE) released the first ever ‘report card’ of the state of engineering infrastructure in South Africa. This report highlighted ‘the observations of the professionals responsible for the planning, construction, operation and maintenance of our nation’s life-support system’. It graded infrastructure on a scale from A+ to E−. Overall, it gave South Africa’s infrastructure a D+ grade. The purpose of the report card was to draw the attention of government, and of the public at large, to the importance of maintenance, and to factors underlying the state of repair of infrastructure – factors such as skills and finance, for example. The report card was a great success, and received media coverage exceeding the Institution’s highest expectations. The SAICE 2011 Infrastructure Report Card was launched in April 2011. It covers ten sectors, further divided into 27 subsectors. These have been graded and the trend since 2006 is indicated. An overall grade of C− was awarded. It is anticipated that the 2011 report card will be widely disseminated and debated. Even more so because, since 2006, service delivery problems, and in particular those problems attributable to inadequacies of operation and maintenance of infrastructure, have received heightened attention.