Perhaps no other country on earth has gone through such massive institutional and social development reform as South Africa has in the last seven years. Democritus pioneered such concepts as Community Based Public Works Programmes in South Africa in the early 1990's and has been involved in Institutional Capacity Building ever since. As a result we have extensive experience in this field. At the moment much of our work is in the rural water supply and sanitation sector, where we are involved in a major programme in South Africa. However we have also recently been involved in low cost housing and community driven road construction programmes.

The chief role that we play in institutional capacity building is often that of an interface between the local community, design & construction activities of engineering teams, and local authority to whom the project will be transferred.

As such, our inputs into projects typically include:

	Project initiation with client and democratically elected local community representatives
	Establishment of community project steering committees (PSC)
	Training needs analyses and skills audits
	Empowerment of PSC members with regard to the scope and consequences of project business plans.
	Community awareness activities and assessment of community "buy-in" to projects.
	Selection and training of local labour foremen and supervisors
	Selection and technical skills audit of construction sub-contractors.
	Technical skills training and certification.
	Transfer to local authority: