The expanded public works infrastructure programme: Lessons learned in transferring technical skills to unskilled workers within the South African construction industry

Unemployment in South Africa has increased to an alarming 24.3% of the job seeking population. As a result, the socio-economic well-being of South Africa is severely threatened due to activities such as social exclusion and crime. Consequently, the fight against unemployment has rarely been more pressing and the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) was established as a skills transfer programme to support employment creation. The success and continuous improvement of skills transfer programmes are of the utmost importance and this study sets out to determine failure factors and recommendations from similar past projects to update outdated literature. The relationships between the EPWP stakeholders are investigated within this study. The investigation focuses on the success of the programme, recurring failure factors and possible remedies from the perspective of the contractors, consultants and project managers involved. The investigation commences with a literature survey followed by a focus group. Results obtained are then validated through a survey. The investigation suggests that the EPWP achieves most of its stated programme objectives, but fails to support employment creation. The investigation indicates that there are indeed recurring failure factors. A list of these failure factors and possible remedies are suggested for future skills transfer projects.