The Ethical Leadership and Culture Project is intended to promote adherence to good corporate governance principles, primarily the governance outcome related to ethics. The initiative is intended to assess the perceptions of ethics at the institution, perform relevant risk assessments, and implement specific recommendations to enhance ethics management and culture at the university.

Goals and Objectives:

• Improve governance at the institution by contributing to the enhancement of ethical leadership and behavioural practices through recommended practices.
• Promoting the university values, primarily integrity, because as a campus community, we expect all conduct to be rooted in integrity, mutual respect, and civility.
• Promoting sustainability, which requires good governance, including ethical and effective leadership, and corporate citizenship on the part of the institution.
• Facilitate the effective management of ethics and ethical risks in support of governance structures at the university.

Benefits:

• Ethical leadership (role models).
• Strong ethical culture within the university.
• Enhanced university reputation.
• Improved stakeholder trust (students, staff and external stakeholders).

CUT recognises the importance of data-driven decision-making in achieving its strategic objectives. As a higher education institution, CUT generates vast amounts of data from various sources, including student information systems, financial systems, and research outputs. However, the current data landscape at CUT is characterised by data silos, poor data quality, limited analytic capabilities, and inadequate data governance.

The Data Strategy Development Project therefore aims to create a comprehensive approach to how data is collected, shared, and used across the university. This project will involve assessing the current data landscape in order to determine its data maturity level, defining key data governance practices, and crafting a fit-for-purpose data strategy with a defined roadmap for achieving data-driven decision-making.

Project Goals and Objectives:
To operationalise the approved CUT Data Strategy (2025) by establishing the governance, systems, and capabilities required to ensure that data becomes a strategic, trusted, and transformative institutional asset that enhances decision-making, accountability, and operational excellence across the University.

Benefits:

• Strengthening institutional governance and decision-making.
• Improved Data Quality and Operational Efficiency.
• Foundational enablement for Digital Transformation.

The project aims to enhance the current Dental Treatment Centre on CUT Bloemfontein campus, creating a state-of-the-art facility that integrates clinical services with experiential student learning. The facility will provide high-quality, technologically advanced dental care to the CUT community and the wider Free State population, while simultaneously serving as a learning environment for students in the Dental Assisting and Oral Hygiene programmes.

Project Goals and Objectives:

• Establish a leading dental facility with the latest technology in patient care.
• Provide industry partners with access to advanced dental equipment for clinical training.
• Create an innovative learning environment with interactive technology for students.
• Integrate real-world exposure into the WIL (Work Integrated Learning) module to enhance student competencies.

The Central University of Technology (CUT) Artificial Intelligence Hub is part of a national AI footprint under the auspices of the AI Institute of South Africa (AIISA). The institutionalisation of the AI Hub at CUT is a strategic initiative aimed at embedding artificial intelligence into the academic, research, and operational fabric of the university.

Project Strategies:

• Short-Term Goals (1-3 years): Establish a formal governance and policy framework; continuous training of over 10,000 academics, students, and staff in AI literacy; acquiring critical infrastructure; infusing AI into the curriculum; activating partnerships.
• Mid-Term Goals (4-6 years): Expand AI applications to smart health and smart city solutions; enhance collaboration; prioritise commercialisation of AI innovations; launch outreach programmes.
• Long-Term Goals (7-10 years): Position the CUT AI Hub as a global leader; establish AI-driven industries; influence national AI policy; achieve a 30% increase in AI-driven economic outputs.

Benefits:

• Position CUT as a regional leader in responsible and inclusive AI education.
• Build AI literacy and practical skills across disciplines.
• Facilitate interdisciplinary research in AI, agriculture, health, ICT, and social sciences.
• Upgrade CUT’s digital and physical infrastructure with high-performance computing and smart classrooms.

The Next Generation Women Leadership Programme (nGenWiL) is a two-year institutional leadership development initiative aimed at accelerating the growth and advancement of women in both academic and administrative roles at CUT.

Goals:

• Develop a sustainable leadership pipeline for women in higher education through structured development, mentoring, and experiential learning.
• Promote self-awareness and emotionally intelligent, values-driven leadership that aligns with CUT's Vision 2030.
• Prepare participants for leadership in digital transformation by incorporating digital fluency and critical thinking.
• Support career clarity and mobility with tailored development pathways, coaching, and stretch assignments.
• Strengthen support networks through mentorship, peer communities, and national collaborations.

Expected Outcomes: 10 women leaders developed across two campuses; documented leadership portfolios; improved female representation in middle and senior management; established alumni network.

The project entails the development of a comprehensive institutional strategy that will guide digital modernisation across the University. It will assess CUT’s current digital landscape, identify capability and technology gaps, and develop an actionable roadmap to drive transformation in teaching, learning, research, and administration.

Project Goals and Objectives:

• Conduct a digital-maturity assessment across all university portfolios.
• Develop a shared institutional digital vision and guiding principles.
• Establish digital transformation pillars, enablers, and governance structures.
• Develop a five-year implementation roadmap and investment plan.
• Secure institutional approval and adoption through governance structures.

This project will streamline CUT’s core business processes by identifying inefficiencies, duplications, and outdated workflows. It will apply process-mapping and Lean principles to redesign administrative and academic operations into simplified, technology-enabled workflows.

Project Goals and Objectives:

• Identify and document key administrative and academic processes for improvement.
• Redesign high-impact processes to eliminate bottlenecks and align with digital-transformation principles.
• Build institutional capacity for continuous improvement and process innovation.
• Measure efficiency gains, turnaround time, and service quality across divisions.

Development of a comprehensive 10-Year Campus Master Plan for the Bloemfontein and Welkom campuses, including spatial planning, infrastructure capacity modelling, capital phasing, maintenance integration, and governance approval.

Project goals and objectives:

• Produce a Council-approved 10-Year Campus Master Plan by December 2026.
• Complete stakeholder consultations across all faculties and operational divisions by June 2026.
• Integrate maintenance backlog reduction strategy into long-term infrastructure planning.

This strategic institutional initiative aims at modernising and integrating the University’s student information ecosystem. The project focuses on improving the efficiency, automation, and integration of core student administration processes that span the entire student academic lifecycle, from application and admission through progression, registration, and ultimately graduation.

Specific objectives include:

• Review and assess the current ERP/SIS environment to identify functional and technical gaps.
• Integrate the Application Ranking System (ARS) with ITS through API to automate admission processes.
• Implement automated student progression, auto-promotion, and academic exclusion processes based on faculty rules.
• Standardise and digitise faculty rules governing admissions, progression, and academic status decisions.
• Develop a roadmap and business case for future student information system modernisation.

This consolidated institutional initiative is designed to integrate renewable energy expansion, advanced energy metering, infrastructure optimisation, and digital energy governance into a single coordinated programme.

Project Goals:

• Reduce grid electricity consumption and associated costs.
• Ensure reliable and continuous campus-wide energy data.
• Integrate renewable energy generation with smart monitoring systems.
• Install hybrid solar PV systems at BHP Phase 2 and Boet Troskie.
• Install smart energy logging systems across 11 residences.
• Replace failing tri-pole fuses on 170 energy meters.
• Develop and deploy an integrated online energy management platform.

To ensure that attendees can gain a greater understanding of their responsibilities as leaders within the CUT context and at societal level.

• To create and maintain a transformed and renewed university culture that promotes dialogue to find common solutions, excellence, and highly motivated teams.
• Maximising team performance by understanding human behaviour and focusing on the needs of individuals and the fundamental goal of the whole team.
• To empower Student Leadership with the necessary competencies and attitude to lead effectively within the university and beyond.
• To inculcate a notion that advocates for student leadership to realise and play a critical role within CUT as champions of the CUT Vision 2030.

The Ethical Leadership and Culture Project is intended to promote adherence to good corporate governance principles, primarily the governance outcome related to ethics. The initiative is intended to assess the perceptions of ethics at the institution, perform relevant risk assessments, and implement specific recommendations to enhance ethics management and culture at the university.

Benefits: Ethical leadership (role models), strong ethical culture within the university, enhanced university reputation, and improved stakeholder trust.

The Internal Audit Unit is seeking to automate its processes through the procurement of audit software. The automation of the internal audit processes will facilitate efficient and effective internal audit activities and operations, enhance the quality of work, facilitate the performance of quality assurance and improvement reviews, and enable the Internal Audit Unit to achieve its mandate and meet stakeholder expectations.

Goals and Objectives:

• Increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the Internal Audit Unit to contribute to the enhancement of governance, risk management, and control processes.
• Increase the coverage of work and enable the Internal Audit Unit to perform specialised audit work (e.g., data analytics, AI).
• Facilitate effective handover processes and ensure the continuity of operations.
• Facilitate the performance of the External Quality Review Assessment in compliance with Global Internal Audit Standards.

This project is aimed at implementing the university’s project management as well as institutional effectiveness and efficiency frameworks. This project will assist CUT in ensuring the proper completion of strategic projects as per the approved list, promote project management principles, and facilitate overall institutional effectiveness and efficiency.

Objectives include: Optimise Resource Allocation, Enhance Operational Processes, Promote Data-Driven Decision-Making, Foster a High-Performance Culture, Improve Stakeholder Satisfaction, and produce quarterly progress reports.

Guided by its values of Ubuntu and inclusivity, CUT recognises the importance of multilingualism. Aligned with the 2021 Language Policy, this project aims to enhance multilingual communication within the university by procuring essential simultaneous interpreting equipment. This initiative will facilitate effective communication across diverse linguistic groups, including Sesotho, Afrikaans, English, and South African Sign Language (SASL), during key university events.

Benefits: Enhanced inclusivity and access, improved communication and collaboration, promotion of multilingualism and language development, and enhanced reputation and visibility as a leader in inclusivity.

In alignment with the overall university vision and the Digital Transformation vision, the Institutional Registrar division has embarked on an Operational Efficiency project that aims to improve operational efficiency within Academic Administration through process mapping using the Nintex Promapp solution.

Project Goals and Objectives: Reduce inefficient processes in the current student lifecycle management system, enhance data quality, data integrity, and accuracy, and promote data governance.

The Data Strategy Development Project aims to create a comprehensive approach to how data is collected, shared, and used across the university. This project will involve assessing the current data landscape in order to determine its data maturity level, defining key data governance practices, and crafting a fit-for-purpose data strategy with a defined roadmap.

Benefits: Enhance Institutional Operational Efficiency, Improved Data Quality and Security, Data-driven decision-making, Stronger Data Governance and Compliance, and Support Digital Transformation.

The Student Centric Centre (SCC) is a dedicated space designed to provide a holistic, student-centered environment aimed at promoting student success by allowing students to take care of all institutional administrative tasks in one location. This centralised location endeavors to eliminate the "runaround" often experienced by students.

Project Goals and Objectives: Enhance Student Experience, Enhance Service Delivery through cutting-edge technology, Academic Success and Retention, Promote Holistic student wellbeing, Create an Innovative Space, and Train and develop staff.

The project aims to develop a comprehensive, secure, and user-friendly software solution for efficiently managing electronic records throughout their entire lifecycle. This system will assist the institution in automating record-keeping processes, improving operational efficiency, ensuring legal compliance, and safeguarding sensitive records.

Benefits: Improved operational efficiency, enhanced data accessibility with a centralised digital repository, ensure compliance with legal and regulatory requirements, increased transparency and accountability, and a scalable system.

Finalise the Governance Framework and related documents to have fit-for-purpose, efficient and effective governance structures.

Project Goals and Objectives: Determine what recommendations would be accepted from the final draft governance framework, workshop the terms of reference of the governance committee to ensure they are effective and aligned with the CUT Statute, and recommend final terms of reference to Council and/or Senate for final approval.

Welkom campus has selected to strengthen agriculture as one of the flagship innovation projects. The focus of phase 1 will be to pilot the production of high-quality, nutritional vegetables for consumption by students, staff, and surrounding communities on 1 ha. Phase 2 will focus on project expansion and commercialisation on a 10-ha land.

Benefits: Introduction of STEM programs, promote entrepreneurship, increase third-stream income, establish a facility to train local farmers, and provide a facility for Work Integrated Learning (WIL) students.

An investment opportunity exists to acquire and transform the Bundu Game Lodge into a financially sustainable agriculture and hospitality hub for CUT. This property is located 5km from the CUT Welkom Campus and presents great potential to transform the university.

Project Goals and Objectives: Purchase the facility, optimise ongoing operations, expand into commercial agriculture (game farming, hydroponics, mohair), expand into a hospitality programme (boutique hotel, diploma), and expand into accommodation.

This proposal seeks to conduct a Gap Analysis of FEBIT's Engineering Programmes against the IEA GAPC Version 2021 to ensure that the FEBIT engineering qualifications align with the updated Graduate Attributes and Professional Competencies as set out by the International Engineering Alliance.

Benefits: Aligning FEBIT's engineering qualifications with IEA GAPC 2021 ensures CUT’s programmes remain internationally competitive, safeguards ECSA accreditation status, equips students with relevant skills, and strengthens industry ties.

This proposal seeks funding for the development of an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) orientation programme designed to help new students at CUT acclimatise to campus life. In its first phase, the programme will focus on FEBIT-related campus tours, showcasing key facilities such as the Additive Manufacturing Centre (CRPM), Engineering Design Labs, Built Environment Spaces, IT Computer Labs, and PDTS.

Benefits: Enhanced Student Experience, showcasing student projects, increased student retention, improved enrolment, and positioning CUT as a leader in technological innovation.

This project seeks to develop a standardised process and product for the commercialisation of a medicinal plant with significant anticancer, antimicrobial, and antioxidant properties. The project is a collaboration between the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and CUT.

Project Goals and Objectives: Optimise Extraction Processes, Develop Product Prototypes meeting SAHPRA standards, Conduct Market and Techno-economic Analysis, and achieve Regulatory Compliance.

This project will focus on sustaining the university’s only accredited journal and to develop more accredited publications that are directly aligned with the University’s Research Centres.

Benefits: Sustainability of the University’s only accredited journal since 2005, academic development based on publication writing and editorial practices, enhanced profile of the University as part of knowledge creation, and generating research subsidy value.

The CUT Measurement and Verification Team is an accredited energy service consultancy (ESCO) putting forth a strategic project that will expand the existing scope of their energy audit and measurement and verification activities conducted within the CUT campuses.

Benefits: Smartly and efficiently implement demand management in residences and offices, monitor and track energy consumption reduction, create awareness of energy efficiency benefits, ensure potential EPC grading of targeted buildings, and reduce monthly electricity bills.

In September 2026, South Africa will host professional and amateur solar car teams from around the world as they take on the Sasol Solar Challenge. Teams take on the challenge to develop, build and drive solar-powered cars, with the ultimate goal of covering the most distance without using a drop of fuel.

Benefits: Advancing Renewable Energy Technology, showcasing CUT's Research and Innovation Excellence, real-world skill development for students and staff, promoting sustainability and public awareness, and enhancing CUT’s community engagement and educational impact.

The project "leaders at all levels" implies and is premised on the notion that, regardless of the level of position that employees hold in CUT, each employee is a leader of their own behaviour and accountable for their impact on CUT and stakeholders.

Benefits: Improved Collaboration Across Teams, Enhanced Leadership Effectiveness, Increased Employee Engagement, Strengthened Organisational Culture, Better Conflict Resolution, Increased Adaptability and Innovation, Improved Customer Relationships, Sustainable Performance Improvements, Alignment with Organizational Goals, and Reduced Burnout.

Human Resources aims to address barriers related to the employment of People with Disabilities through affirmative action measures aimed at increasing awareness of disability in the workplace and the types of reasonable accommodation that employees might expect from the university.

Benefits: Promotion of Inclusivity and Equity, Enhanced Employee Morale and Productivity, Encourages Accessible and Adaptive Practices, Strengthens Diversity and Innovation, and Improves Stakeholder Engagement and Reputation.

This project focuses on enhancing the Brand visibility and strategic communication of CUT through targeted initiatives. These include acquiring and managing university-owned billboard structures, rebranding the institutional identity, developing a personality-driven CUT mascot, improving the university website, and establishing a mobile production studio.

Benefits: Improved regional and international visibility, increased enrolment and stakeholder participation, a more engaging and user-friendly online platform, modernised and consistent branding, and long-term cost efficiency.

Integration of solar PV modules on the rooftops of existing critical buildings with hybrid inverters in a bid to design and install full solar PV systems. This integration will be implemented in five buildings (ZR Mahabane, Bethuel Sethai Library, Japie van Lill Auditorium, Clement Tsehloane Keto Library and P Block).

Benefits: Cost savings from electricity consumed, energy saving from the Eskom national grid, reduction of greenhouse gases emission, reduction in reliance on the national grid, and the project is techno-economic viable with a favourable payback period.

The old CUT Esters meters due to discontinuity and being out of calibration will be migrated from the UMFA online energy management system to the new Advanced Monitoring Management system. The migration will be achieved by replacing the existing GSM links with compatible AMS GSM links and communication cable.

Benefits: Prevention of loss of both historical data and current electricity consumption data, continuity of measurement and verification procedures, ensuring credible energy data is available to perform EPCs, and ensuring the online energy management system is up to date and can be remotely monitored in real time.