Awards
Your professional home for environmental engineering in South Africa.
Recognises emerging talent through awards and promotes Fellow nominations to honour excellence in environmental engineering.
Other SAICE SEED Portfolios
SEED participates annually in the special awards judging at the Eskom Young Scientists Awards. SEED awards and acknowledges students who have outstanding projects in the field of environmental engineering. The awards encourage students to take on a career in engineering and creates awareness for environmental engineering. The winners of these SEED special awards are given the opportunity to present their projects to the audience of civil engineers, at the annual event called the Young Movers and Shakers.
Fellow and Honorary Fellow Nominations – The Awards portfolio leader would encourage the nomination of potential Fellow and Honorary Fellows according to the rules set out. And see the process through to the submission of the required documents to SAICE.
Why is the Awards portfolio important for SEED and environmental engineering in South Africa?
The Awards portfolio is important because it helps identify and celebrate emerging talent early, which supports both awareness and long-term growth of the profession. SAICE publicly noted its congratulations to winners at the Eskom Expo for Young Scientists special awards ceremony in December 2022, showing that SAICE is actively involved in recognising young achievers through this platform. This makes the SEED awards role more than symbolic: it helps encourage school learners and students to see environmental engineering as a real career path and gives promising young people visibility within the wider engineering community.
How do student awards help strengthen the environmental engineering pipeline?
Student awards help strengthen the pipeline by rewarding innovation, raising the profile of environmental engineering topics, and creating a bridge between school-level excellence and the professional engineering community. SAICE’s own communications confirm its participation in recognising Eskom Expo winners, while division reporting shows that “young movers and shakers” events form part of SAICE division calendars. That matters because giving award winners a chance to present their projects to an engineering audience turns recognition into development, exposure, and motivation for future study and professional growth.
What does the Fellow and Honorary Fellow nominations role involve in practice?
This role involves identifying deserving candidates, encouraging nominations, and guiding the formal submission process according to SAICE’s rules. Under SAICE’s 2024 By-laws, a Fellow nomination must be supported by three corporate members in good standing and is then reviewed by membership officers and the College of Fellows before going to the Executive Board. Honorary Fellow nominations follow an even more formal route: they must be proposed by three Council members, include a draft citation, go to the Executive Board, and then require support from four-fifths of Council members present in a secret ballot. So the portfolio leader is not simply suggesting names; they are helping ensure that excellence in environmental engineering is recognised through a structured institutional process.