Reforms in the road sector since the 1990s, such as the establishment of road funds and road agencies, have created a need for professional staff with technical, financial and managerial skills to effectively pilot and help develop the new institutions. Building and sustaining the requisite capacity for road sector management is achieved by a combination of factors. Solid educational background and basic training in key professional disciplines - engineering, economics, accounting, etc. - are essential building blocks. The institutional work environment and the incentive structure also play a critical role in defining how productively skills are employed and how appropriately skills and experience are rewarded. Work environment and incentives is the subject of other RMF sub-themes, such as Road Funds and Road Agencies. This section focuses on professional training aspects of capacity building supported by the SSATP. International training has been offered annually through programs developed by the International Road Federation (IRF) and the University of Birmingham for English-speaking trainees and by the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (ENPC) for French-speaking trainees. The modules offered under the first program cover innovations in road management, road financing and road fund management and road asset management. The second program covers road financing and road fund management and contract management. Local training institutions need to be strengthened to sustain local training capabilities and better respond to the local demand for training. The University of Birmingham pioneered partnership with a local training institute in 2003 when a 2-week course was organized by the University of Pretoria. A training course was developed with the University of Nairobi and offered for the first time in November 2005. A similar course is being developed in a French-speaking country. The objective is to provide high quality training to a larger number of participants at a lower cost. Over time, it is expected that regional training institutions will play a progressively larger role in developing and delivering course material in parallel with carrying out research activities in related areas. SSATP's role has been to help establish the content of the training programs above in collaboration with the training institutions and develop training modules. Members of the SSATP team participate in the training sessions as trainers. SSATP also promotes the training courses through its network. SSATP is also available to help organize the following specific training courses : - Road Economic Decision (RED) model : Economic evaluation of investment on low volume roads;
- Tariff and Trafic model : Interactive learning tool for managers of road maintenance resources which simulates financing options and their impact on road networks;
- SOURCE : Benchmarking tool for road network based on vehicle travel speed;
- HDM4 : Economic evaluation of investment and road maintenance strategies on main road networks.
SSATP supports the growing involvement of regional sector associations in the development of demand for training and capacity building activities. In the short term, regional associations can identify suitable country partners, develop criteria for selection of candidates to training activities; organize country workshops including for training of future trainers, and advise on dissemination of lessons learned from past training. In the longer term, a role in delivery of knowledge might also be envisaged. Publications: |
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