Civil Engineering April 2021 | Vol 29 No 3

68 April 2021 Civil Engineering SA I CE and profess i onal news Tom McKune spent the first seventeen years of his working career at the NPA Roads Department where he worked his way from learner technician to control technician in the Geometric Design Office. He was responsible for his own design work, managing a team of engineers and technicians in training, and liaising with consulting engineers. It was during these years at NPA that Tom’s passion for geometric design and training were first realised. Tom left the NPA Roads Department in 1990 and joined Technikon Natal as a senior lecturer. His teaching career, much like his public service career, blossomed and it was not long before he was appointed the head of the civil engineering department, a posi- tion he held for just over 27 years until his retirement in 2020. Tom was also promoted quickly through the academic ranks and achieved the rank of senior director (now equivalent to full professor). Tom’s association with SAICE also spans many years. He was initially involved at a branch level when SAICE first merged with SAICET, and then at a national level on the Membership and Education and Training Committee. Tom has served as Chair of the Education and Training Committee for almost 20 years and is a long-standing member of the Finance and Administration Committee, Executive Board, and Council of SAICE. In his role as Head of Training, Tom will be responsible for planning, develop- ment, and implementation of all SAICE courses and training initiatives. He will also drive the development of a long-term strategy to transform the SAICE Education and Training Department into an entity called the SAICE Academy and assist with aspects of the Growing Forward Together strategy, specifically SAICE SOS, Knowledge Trailblazer, Grow-a-Graduate, Grow-an-Expert, and Assist-a-University. Civil Engineering spoke to Tom about his new role and what SAICE members can expect. Please tell us about your new role and what you hope to achieve. My role will be focused on all aspects that relate to training, irrespective of when that training takes place in a professional’s career. This includes increasing the knowledge areas of our expert divisions. The idea will be to ensure that SAICE remains the leader in all technical aspects of the civil engineering profession and is the go-to organisation on such matters. My first priority will be to consolidate the current activities of the SAICE Education and Training Department as a sub-set of the SAICE Academy. We also plan to migrate more of our existing course offerings to an online mode of delivery. I also hope to get traction on the SAICE student textbook initiative so that the first book/s are available from 2022. Please tell us more about the SAICE Academy and its role. The SAICE Academy will be the over- arching vehicle through which all SAICE branded education and training activities take place. This means that irrespective of where in the professional life cycle the training is needed, the academy will manage that process. This would be in association with well-established SAICE vehicles like the Candidate Academy, and many of our career-focused activities, such as the bridge building and water competitions. A new approach is going to be better structuring the career development of a professional after they have registered with ECSA – we plan to introduce the concept of building your career one puzzle piece at a time. We will work with the divisions to identify what skill sets and attributes someone who is registered with 15 plus years’ experience should have. As a simple example, the SAICE Academy will use the concept of a puzzle for each discipline to assist an individual with the development of their career post registration, one puzzle piece at a time. By developing the pieces of the various puzzles for enhancing the capacity of the profession, we will help to ensure that the next generation of leaders in our field have the necessary skill set to maintain and improve our infrastructure. We will also try to assist the public sector to profes- sionalise in accordance with their own objectives, as well as to create capacity within public departments and SOEs. How will you assist with aspects of the Growing Forward Together strategy? Many of the cogs of the Growing Forward Together initiative fall within the education and training space, and my role will be to provide support to the various champions and to assist them to achieve their delivera- bles. I have already made initial contact with the champions and offered my support. How will you work to promote STEM and civil engineering among young people? We already work closely with organisa- tions like Protec, but the relatively small percentage of matriculants with math- ematics and physics at a reasonable level has dwindled even further since Allyson Lawless first published Numbers and Needs . The work initiated during 2019 under the SAICE STAR (Success Through Academic Readiness) Programme needs to be expanded and more schools exposed to the value of interventions like the Khan Academy which would greatly enhance the STEM agenda. Info TomMcKune Head of Training SAICE tom@saice.org.za SAICE takes training to new heights To enhance and grow SAICE’s education and training offering and drive the establishment of the SAICE Academy, the Institution has appointed Tom McKune as Head of Training.