This is an excerpt from the Hendrik van der Bijl Lecture delivered by Brian Bruce to the South African Academy of Engineering.

Quality of life is a function of many factors – and is many things to different people. It is in my view unlikely that South Africans will aspire to a socio-economic framework that matches what we currently see in much of the so-called developed world. It is more likely that our future socio-economic framework will reflect a more sustainable development path.

Our banking sector and a great deal of our industrial capacity is world class. Many parts of most of our cities and towns and much of our farming sector as well. Our construction industry, too, has proved itself against the world’s best. These are national assets, to preserve and use for the benefit of our future development aspiration for our total society.

Every modification to the natural environment that results in the built environment should result in an improvement to the quality of life, and is the work of the construction industry.

The following statistics are approximate and give some indication of the challenge we face in matching construction industry capacity and capability with the future demand for socio-economic development in South Africa.

As Chairperson of the Construction Industry Development Board, I am privileged to have been asked to lead a public-private initiative of government that has the mission to develop and engage the following vision: “A construction industry policy and strategy that promotes stability, fosters economic growth and international competitiveness, creates sustainable employment and addresses historic imbalances as it generates new industry capacity.”

There is a worldwide renaissance emerging in construction and engineering. I am a member of the Board of Govenors for Construction and Engineering at the World Economic Forum. Murray & Roberts is a member of the Major Projects Association in the United Kingdom. Both are involved in Revaluing Construction as an essential strategy for society to understand what is required to create its own future.

Research by the Major Projects Association has shown that in recent decades, the Capital Employed in Major Projects increased more than 100 times faster than the Capital Employed of Major Contractors. This led to major project failures and the development of a variety of risk abatement partnering and partnership arrangements.

My own proposition is that over the 100 years between 1900 and 2000, the Net Present Value (NPV) of expressed aspiration for quality of life has significantly outgrown the NPV of construction industry capacity to deliver on that aspiration.

Due to geographic and cultural isolation, it is probable that only 20% of the 1,5 billion people inhabiting our planet in 1900 were relatively dissatisfied with their quality of life. It is likely, however, that of the six billion people inhabiting our planet in 2000, more than 80% may be relatively dissatisfied with their quality of life.

This means that the same absolute number of 1,2 billion people are as relatively satisfied today as in 1900, relative to all other people inhabiting our planet. This means that the total population growth over this period has been born into relative dissatisfaction. This defines, for me, our collective and major challenge for the 21st Century.

“The warrior of light studies the two columns on either side  of the door he is trying to open. One is called Fear and the other is called Desire. The warrior looks at the column of Fear and on it is written: ‘You are entering a dangerous, unfamiliar world where everything you have learned up to now will prove useless.’

The warrior looks at the column of Desire and on it is written: ‘You are about to leave a familiar world wherein are stored all the things you ever wanted and for which you struggled long and hard.
The warrior smiles because nothing frightens him and nothing holds him. With the confidence of someone who knows what he wants, he opens the door.”

“Manual of the Warrior of Light,” Paul Coelho.