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Andrew Skudder, Murray & Roberts Group sustainability director

 

To ensure it has adequate engineering capacity, Murray & Roberts actively recruits and develops engineering graduates. The Group’s Graduate Development Programme is geared for a range of engineering disciplines. “With the skills shortage, it’s very important that we build our own talent because it’s difficult to find engineers in a competitive marketplace,” says Group sustainability director, Andrew Skudder. “We want them to understand our purpose, values and mission from the very beginning.”

 

STRENGTHENING PROJECT MANAGEMENT CAPACITY
The construction and engineering industry also encounters skills shortages in project management – a critical skill for Murray & Roberts and other contractors as their success depends on the favourable outcome of the projects they work on. “The scale of the projects that we carry out, particularly for Government and state-owned entities, pushes our project management capacity to its limits and can cause major risk to our project managers,” says Skudder. Because a large part of project management skill is experiential, Murray & Roberts believes in giving young graduates the opportunity to manage projects early in their careers under the tutelage of experienced project managers. While technical project management experience is invaluable, these individuals also need to be good leaders. “We’re focused on enhancing the leadership capabilities of all our managers, but specifically project management because that represents the pinnacle point of our business.”

 

Creating employment and developing critical artisan skills Artisinal skills are also in short supply. “Finding riggers, boilermakers or welders is a continuous challenge,” says Skudder. “But it presents a huge opportunity for the employment and development of people. The solution is that we need to improve FET (Further Education and Training) colleges, as well as internal skills training within organisations.

 

” Organisations like Murray & Roberts need to support the transformation of the education system in South Africa as learners from secondary schools become the talent pool that feeds into tertiary institutions. “We need an ongoing effort to improve the quality of education – our maths and science teacher competencies in particular. As a society, we need to develop the right quality of teachers and retain them in their profession. “And we need a greater focus on early childhood development, especially on numeracy and literacy in the schooling path,” Skudder concludes.

 

Based on an excerpt from an article published in Business Day Empowerment, 1 July 2013.

 

Murray & Roberts believes in giving young graduates the opportunity to manage projects early in their careers.

 

 

Nomalizo (Ntombi) Langa-Royds
was appointed an independent nonexecutive
director of Murray & Roberts Holdings on 1 June 2013. She will also serve as chairman
of the Social & Ethics committee and a member of the Remuneration & Human Resources committee. Ntombi has BA (Law) and LLB degrees from the National University
of Lesotho and owns Nthake Consults, a human resources consultancy. She has extensive experience in human resources management gained as director of human resources at Independent Newspapers, SABC and Bevcan division of Nampak. Ntombi is a nonexecutive director of African Bank Investments, Mpact and Pretoria Portland Cement.

 

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Dr Orrie Fenn has
been appointed
executive responsible
for the Construction
Global Underground
Mining Platform
following the
retirement of Peter Adams and the
disposal of the Construction Products businesses. He resigned from the Board with effect from 1 June 2013 due to the change in his executive responsibility.

 

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Thokozani Mdluli
was appointed
a director of
Murray & Roberts
Limited on 1 July 2013. Thokozani will continue to lead the Group’s health, wellness, safety
and environmental function and will work with Andrew Skudder on the Group’s broad-based black economic
empowerment strategy.