Fred Selolwane was attending a value engineering workshop for the Innovation Hub the week I met him for dinner. The venue? The Beef Baron at the Grand Palm.
You could describe it as one of the go-to venues for business lunches and dinners. It is comfortable enough with your executive types.
Our corner side table offered a panoramic view of the restaurant’s sedate surroundings.
Selolwane presents a topic of immense interest to me. It is seven years since I profiled him for the Sunday Standard. At the time, in November 2005, I had written about how he was a pioneer among citizen quantity surveyors for two reasons. The first Motswana to graduate with a first class degree in quantity surveying. Also, the first citizen to be appointed an equity director in a transnational firm, CCMI Botswana, the local arm of Davis Langdon Farrow Laing, then South Africa’s biggest and oldest construction cost firm.
It is the same Selolwane who a former teacher of his wrote about fondly and vividly in a published book, My Journey To Botswana.
But before we proceed for a sit-in within the Beef Baron’s Interior, we huddled over a table near the pool and the re-aquaintance begins.
What has changed over these seven year? Selolwane doesn’t blink. He explains how seven years prior, the world economy was just teetering into recession. Even then, Botswana’s construction industry was amid a slump.
“It was a question of many economic areas needing a shock therapy,” he says. “Earnings were dwindling from diamonds and tourism ÔÇô that that fed into the economy.”
With government being the economy’s biggest player by far, the recession’s effects on the treasury produced a chain effect. Many projects awarded for design and construction were cancelled.
Contractors were stuck ÔÇô many had spent money, gone to tender, done project evaluations. Quantity surveyors were shedding jobs. Government was trimming its workforce to cut labour costs.
But smart companies like Davis Langdon looked to the private sector to see their projects to fruition. Many companies were closing down, some relocating to homesteads to cut overheads.
And now? “The word ‘tender’ is beginning to re-emerge,” he says.
Choosing the smart route, Davis Langdon streamed out into Africa. “We saw opportunities in the continent to target unharnessed resources,” he says.
There were immense opportunities beyond quantity surveying. In oil. In mining.
Then the merger of Davis Langdon with Aecon, a multi-disciplinary company registered on the New York stock exchange brought huge transformation ÔÇô both to him and the firm he represents. Aecon is a Fortune 500 company.
“Aecon is a company with the appetite to invest in Africa,” he says. “The merger meant that we are now Aecon.”
Beyond quantity surveying, Davis Langdon has thus ventured into project management, engineering and other suits of construction. The Botswana office still employs 100 percent Batswana despite it being not citizen owned, he says. “After all, Botswana has produced high calibre staff capable of competing anywhere,” he says.
You can guess ÔÇô the man sitting across the table is one of these ‘high calibre’ people. I’m sitting holding his two business cards, both naming him as Executive for Davis Langdon and Aecon.
The change gave Davis Langdon a competitive edge over other quantity surveying firms.
“With this new arrangement, we can go into areas like mines ÔÇô diamonds and gold ÔÇô and are involved in the ports in Durban and Namibia. We also do cost management as a bigger component of the project we are implementing,” he says.
The recession sent other quantity surveying firms into a tail spin. “But we were able to stay ahead and avoid retrenching staff,” he tells me. Owing to the wide scope offered by the Aecon tie-up, staff could be seconded to other divisions. “As we speak, some are in Qatar, a country low in human resources but heavy on projects.”
Have more citizen quantity surveyors come through to reduce the dominance by expatriates?
“Over the years, some quantity surveying companies emerged but not to the extent of dominating,” he says. “But some of the companies formerly run by expatriates are now in citizen hands and being run professionally.”
It is clear the tremendous progress in Selolwane’s career as he talks animatedly about his personal development in the seven years since we last met. “I have taken on a lot more responsibilities ÔÇô both in the industry and the wider economy.”
Three years ago, he was elected President of Botswana Institute of Quantity Surveyors. He was re-elected and is now serving the first year of his second term. “Having to look after the interests of the quantity surveying fraternity is a huge responsibility,” he says.
What about the challenges over the seven years? “At the height of the recession, a lot of quantity surveyors looked to us for direction in lobbying government,” he says in explaining his role as president. One area was in lobbying for a stimulus package for the construction industry, a key barometer of the economy. “We are still battling the after effects of the recession.”
He explains that his major task as president of the Institute is to ensure the Quantity Surveying Act becomes law. The Act, he says, will be a milestone ÔÇô regulating quantity surveyors as professionals in the manner lawyers and doctors are regulated. Among other things it will seek to establish a Regulatory Board with a Secretariat that will serve as the registrar for quantity surveyors.
The Regulatory Board follows realisation by the government that the construction industry is not contributing optimally to Botswana’s social economic development.
“I hope by the end of second term to pass the baton to my successor with the Act in place,” he says.
One of the challenges he pinpoints is the non-participation of quantity surveyors in engineering projects. Government only uses quantity surveyors on building projects. For roads, all projects go to engineers. So you find engineers design, prepare bills of quantity, prepare contracts between contractors and government, do the tendering process, evaluate contractors, recommend which contactor to use, and then supervise the entire works.
“It’s a situation that lends itself to corruption because there are no checks and balances,” he says. “That’s why you hear of corruption in road works and news about formation of cartels.”
Selolwane now heads public sector works for Aecon, with a focus on the entire continent of Africa. Recently, he transferred to Johannesburg, its Africa headquarters. Now he spends time shuttling between Johannesburg and Gaborone. He still oversees Davis Langdon’s Botswana office.
“We have many projects going and I need to see them to completion,” he says.
But as he withdraws his role from overseeing the Gaborone office, his role will see him criss-cross Africa.
What is the future outlook for construction? “It is still bleak,” he says. “The effects of recession have lingered.”
For one thing, he sees developments in the Gaborone Central Business District creating an oversupply of office space. “In my views will affect the potential for future works. “We may see a long time before new developments come through,” he says.
The plots in CBD had a development covenant. It is either you develop by a set or government repossesses. This has caused speculative development, with developers building without the assurance of assurance of maximum tenancy.
“With this oversupply, it will take a while for someone to risk coming up with commercial buildings,” he says.
At this stage, we have long shifted into the Beef Baron, tucking in to the heart’s content. We are offered sparkling water. We do a back-and-forth over the wine selection. Chardonnay? Eventually we settle for Van Loveren Family Cellar, Merlot 2011. As the main course of chicken breasts and prawns is served, the conversation has veered into other areas.
