City of Cape Town CFO Kevin Jacoby outlined how leadership, data and changes to internal processes can help local government improve infrastructure execution while maintaining financial governance.
Public sector finance leaders must protect public funds, uphold accountability and ensure procurement complies with legislation while enabling infrastructure projects and essential services.
Speaking at the 2026 Finance Indaba, City of Cape Town CFO Kevin Jacoby discussed how finance leaders can navigate the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) without allowing internal procedures to create unnecessary obstacles.
In his presentation, Compliance Without Constraints: Navigating the PFMA and MFMA While Maintaining Operational Efficiency, Kevin explained how the city has used data, collaboration and process changes to address delays and improve infrastructure expenditure.
He identified three areas for finance leaders to consider: building a culture of accountability and enablement, using data to identify bottlenecks and reviewing procedures that hold up infrastructure projects.
Leadership, accountability and enablement
Kevin said finance leaders need to move beyond establishing controls and help colleagues understand how to work within them. This requires an approach that combines governance with practical guidance for staff responsible for projects.
“I do think, though, for a CFO or senior practitioner within finance, the easiest thing that we can do is create controls,” he said.
He argued that finance leaders reach a different level of maturity when they coach colleagues on navigating legislation and internal procedures rather than relying exclusively on controls and consequence management.
This also means recognising that finance is part of the wider management team and shares responsibility for organisational performance.
“As a CFO, you don't have a lateral movement that you can take. There is a direct line, and to coach people along that way, it's helpful if those that are involved in service delivery know how to navigate it,” he said.
He added that finance professionals must understand organisational priorities and help decision-makers meet the requirements governing their work.
He also highlighted the importance of building trust between finance and operational teams. At the City of Cape Town, he has supported executive directors when irregularities have been raised, including representing their cases during the relevant processes.
He explained that this approach helps colleagues trust the guidance they receive from finance while ensuring governance requirements are addressed.
“What's the use of me being there and them respecting me if there's still an irregularity in the process,” he said, explaining why he considers it important to stand alongside colleagues during these proceedings.
Using data to improve infrastructure performance
Kevin's approach at the City of Cape Town began with a question about why engineering teams and finance professionals reported different levels of progress on the same projects.
The initiative involved building datasets, engaging with teams and identifying discrepancies across the project value chain.
He said the city had operated with infrastructure budgets of between R5 billion and R6 billion for several years, but expenditure had remained below budget, with reported performance ranging from 84 percent to 86 percent.
The challenge intensified as the city sought to accelerate major infrastructure investments, including wastewater treatment works and transport terminuses.
He said the city developed datasets for engineers and project managers, alongside governance structures bringing together expertise in contract management, corporate finance, forensic investigations and legal matters.
The information was used to track projects from preparation through to contract management and completion. Efficiency measures also allowed directorates and project managers to compare their performance and identify delays.
“We make directorates and different project managers compete with each other. So we’ve chucked efficiency matrices in there,” he said.
The city also introduced regular collaboration meetings involving executive directors, project teams and cost centre managers. Led by Kevin, these sessions focused on resolving obstacles, with answers provided during meetings or within two days.
The programme has expanded into an enablement initiative through which Jacoby consults with up to 2,000 people per month.
The city also introduced an enablement button on employees' desktops, allowing staff to raise problems anonymously and receive guidance on resolving them.
Kevin said these mechanisms helped the finance team identify problems across the organisation instead of waiting for them to emerge through formal reporting processes.
According to Kevin, the city recorded R12.24 billion in infrastructure expenditure in the latest financial year discussed at the event, exceeding its previous performance.
He stressed that expenditure alone was not sufficient to demonstrate success; the value and outcomes of infrastructure projects also needed to be established.
Removing bottlenecks in funding and project execution
Kevin described how reviewing internal procedures helped the city address delays involving conditional grants and unexpected construction costs.
One challenge involved conditional grants that remained unspent at the end of a financial year, even when contracts had already been awarded. The city had to submit retention applications to the National Treasury to carry the funding into the following year, with assessments sometimes continuing until October.
Previously, service delivery directors could be required to wait until the city adopted its first adjustments budget before proceeding with outstanding projects. This left them with approximately five months to complete the work.
Kevin said the city changed its approach by taking on the funding risk from 1 July and temporarily changing the funding source, subject to the necessary approvals and financial arrangements.
This extended the available period for these projects from five months to what Jacoby described as a 13-month programme.
He also outlined changes to the management of unexpected conditions encountered during construction. Previously, contingency funding was included in project budgets to account for unforeseen circumstances that could lead to additional costs and contract variation orders.
The city instead established a separate insurance fund to cover qualifying unforeseen events, allowing engineers to focus on their technical responsibilities while the fund addressed the associated financial requirements.
He said these adjustments illustrated how organisations could review internal processes to identify constraints that were not necessarily imposed by legislation.
“The MFMA obviously sets a very good and strong backbone for us,” he said. “But so many processes were self-invented to create the constraints and we removed almost all of them.”
“I encouraged finance leaders to examine where delays originate, understand the rules governing each process and work with operational teams to find compliant solutions,” he said.
