The Civil Engineering Contractor September 2018 | Page 32

PROFILE
Pather’s civil progress
By Eamonn Ryan
Neresh Pather, statutory director of the local subsidiary of international civil engineering
consulting firm Mott MacDonald and current president of Consulting Engineers South Africa
(CESA), has played a leading role in transforming the engineering profession.
A
pproximately 4 500, or 27%, of South Africa’s 22 000 consulting
engineers are black, Indian, or coloured (BIC). That’s a relatively
low figure, because to people of Pather’s age who were entering the
world of tertiary education as apartheid drew to a close, engineering was
not a profession of choice in his community, he says.
“Eng