The Civil Engineering Contractor August 2018 | 页面 3

COMMENT Lobbying for value for money makes the system costly, burdensome, ineffective, and prone to fraud; and that procurement systems tended to focus on procedural compliance rather than value for money. As a result, it placed an excessive burden on weak support functions. Just how ludicrous an unbalanced emphasis on price and empowerment becomes, is demonstrated by looking at the complete cost life cycle of an infrastructure project. While consulting engineers provide the overall guidance on such projects, it is in fact the construction costs that comprise just under one-third of total costs, while operations and maintenance comprise two-thirds. The cost of consulting consumes between one and three per cent of the total. So, argued Pather, applying a lowest-cost attribute to this tiny aspect of the project resulted in virtually no saving to the overall life cycle cost — but put at risk the entire project’s viability. This is because firms quoting the lowest price would most likely be firms that did not have the necessary level of skills, experience, and quality assurance. Consequently, infrastructure projects are effectively being awarded on the same criteria as buying pencils or toilet rolls. Yet infrastructure projects are not a commodity. And consulting services are quite different in that the value is the quality of the advice obtained — not a discounted hourly rate. Advice is something which would have consequences on the infrastructure for Eamonn Ryan - editor [email protected] Eamonn T he Civil Engineering Contractor has a new editor in the form of myself. But rest assured that, after having the bar raised by previous editor Kim Kemp, the magazine will experience no change in style or quality. I am a wizened journalist of 20 years’ experience, though a relative novice in civil engineering. While on an intense programme of getting myself up to speed and meeting as many of our readers as possible, I have been struck by some key trends in this industry, with the fresher view perhaps of a novice than what may soon become a jaundiced one. I attended a CESA Gauteng Presidential breakfast in May, in which CESA president Naresh Pather was questioned about a price war currently underway among consulting engineers ever hungry for work. With the vast bulk of infrastructure work coming from the public sector, as one would expect, it is distressing to realise how the government’s current absolutely literal interpretation of compliance in public procurement was producing precisely the opposite of what was presumably intended. These misapplied regulations are inflicting immense harm on the civil engineering industry. Pather pointed out a number of shortcomings in the public sector supply chain management system, as identified by the National Planning Commission, namely the emphasis on compliance-by-box-ticking, which years and even decades to come. It is not the aspect to cut corners on. The challenge faced by the industry is that it sounds awfully protectionist for consulting engineers to lobby for their own higher fees. But a result of the current practice is that while there are plenty of projects in the country, South Africa is fast running out of experienced engineers, disillusioned by seeing the commoditisation of their services. They are undifferentiated from any start-up firm choosing to label itself consulting engineers. The public procurement process does not weed out ‘chancers’ who are unqualified to undertake a complex job. The result is often that those unqualified firms win a contract which they are unable to execute, and which ultimately manifests itself in a poorly performed project, or one which overruns budget. There should be a pre-qualification process (which most developed countries have implemented) to ensure that all bidders are at least qualified to undertake the project, and only thereafter should it be evaluated on price. Pather says CESA is keen to have a dialogue on this issue with the chief procurement officer, but this office remains vacant. CESA is asking that at a minimum, government tenders for large projects consider only members of recognised bodies such as CESA. nn Roads should last half a lifetime, not to the next election. CEC August 2018 - 1