Track: Case Studies

Abstract

Small scale rural community engagement projects which are conducted by engineers fail on occasions as a result of a range of factors such as poor management, a lack of monitoring and evaluation and most importantly, not taking into account social elements. A structured approach on conducting small scale rural community engagement projects is hypothesized in this paper as a solution to improve the success of small scale rural community engagement projects. The paper shows the design of a Systems Engineering framework for the conducting of small scale rural community engagement projects, incorporating social elements and verification procedures to assess the strengths and weaknesses of such projects which could assist in ensuring project success. The framework was applied to a case study and validated on an applicable rural community - based project. An impact assessment was conducted and data analyzed statistically, proved the validity of the framework through means of measuring indicators. The impact assessment revealed that further work was required in the area of maintenance and knowledge transfer but was successful in meeting the needs of the community and dealing with social issues while the framework was being applied to the community-based project, Gwakwani.