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DO WE NEED SUPERVISORY FIRMS?

Oct 14, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Each year, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent by the government on hiring consultants to supervise public works contracts. But has anyone ever sought to find out whether of the hundreds of projects that have been undertaken since the PPP/C came into office, whether any of the supervising consultants have ever found any defects with the works done?
It would be interesting to know what the media finds out as regards whether this was ever done and if so, how many times and what were the consequences.
Supervising consultants are supposed to oversee the work done by contractors. They are the eyes of the government on the ground, ensuring that work is done in accordance with specifications and of the required quality.
So considering some of the controversies that have reared their heads under the present administration, it would make for very interesting reading to know whether at any time, a supervising consultant has had reason to advise the government that a particular contract needed to be rescinded because of the performance on the job of the contracting firm.
These supervising consultants are paid handsomely for the work they have to undertake. It is believed that in some cases, supervision fees can be as high as 20 per cent of the total project costs.
So this does amount to a great deal of money considering the sums that are spent each year for government projects.
But why pay these supervising firms so much when we have in Guyana a coterie of qualified engineers who can do the work for far less and perhaps even better than some of the supervising firms? We have qualified engineers such as Walter Willis, Frederick Flatts and Bert Carter just to name a few. These men also have considerable experience in their field and therefore are more than capable of supervising projects.
Consider the hundreds of millions of dollars that are going to be saved by simply employing these men to supervise government projects. Firstly, it will avoid the government having to go out to tender for the supervisory services and thereby reduce significantly these costs.
We do not need any major consulting firms for most of the projects we have in Guyana. Obviously in the case of major projects we will have to do this but for the vast majority of projects we can simply employ some of our qualified locals to undertake the work on the understanding that the buck stops at them.
If they foul up, if substandard work is passed off, then they will have to face the consequences.
We do not need to be always paying consulting companies millions of dollars to oversee projects. The oversight should be within the ministry itself and involve some of the top engineers in the country who should be paid decent salaries.
It might be argued that Guyana lacks the capacity to supervise these projects or that there are insufficient engineers working outside of contracting firms.
This again is a problem of capacity and so it needs to be asked what has the government been doing all these years to build capacity within the engineering sector?
Most of the engineering graduates from our university leave these shores. Considering the amount of supervising works that need to be done, they do not need to leave Guyana.
The Ministry of Public Works should immediately begin to employ most of these graduates and pay them a very good salary plus fringe benefits so that their skills can be retained in Guyana.
It makes no sense for Guyanese taxpayers’ monies to be spent on training graduates and then we cannot retain them.
We should try to do so. If these graduates are employed within the public sector, they can help supervise the many projects that are being undertaken and thus save the country millions of dollars.
We need to begin this process first, however, by asking whether at all there is need for any supervising consulting firms in Guyana. We need to ask whether it would not be cheaper and better to have trained engineers working within the public service and helping to ensure that there value for money in all the contracts that are awarded by the government.

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