Better enforcement of Govt contracts will improve quality of public works – GAICO CEO

…lauds infrastructure boom to support growing manufacturing, logistics sectors

As the Government continues to invest heavily in expanding and modernising the country’s infrastructure network, a veteran construction mogul has underscored the importance of stricter contract enforcement to help ensure the delivery of high-quality public works.
This view was offered by Komal Singh, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of one of the country’s largest construction companies, GAICO.
“The contract document that you have – the quality control is very, very important in those documents. I can understand that maybe because of the speed of which things are going, there is little oversight in terms of making sure the contractors comply 100% to those quality control issues, but like I said, it’s a work in progress. We need to continuously get more people, more consultants, to oversee some of these projects to make sure that the contractors who are doing them comply with the terms and conditions that is in those contracts,” he explained during a recent episode of The Guyana Dialogue programme.
Additionally, Singh, who previously served as Chairman of the Private Sector Commission (PSC), pointed out that the Government often retains five per cent of the contract sum to cater to any remedial works on projects.
“Most Government projects is one year retention they hold that money for. So, the defects liability on all Government projects is a minimum of a year, so if any failure takes place within a year, Government has the opportunity to go do it themselves and take the five per cent they have for you, or they make sure you get it done before you get your money,” he explained.
In fact, he noted that there is often another layer to these contracts if failures are identified for fixing. “In the contract also, this is something many people don’t know. While I have one year liability on that contract, if six months after there’s a failure and I go and fix that failure, the client have the right to tell me that I have to give them one more year on that failure,” he outlined.
“So, there is remedy in the contract… and as long as those enforcements take place, I could tell you, you will see a lot more improvement in quality of our infrastructure that is being built out there,” he added.

Overhauling public procurement
The Government is actively overhauling public procurement laws and standard-form contracts to align with global International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC) models. Attorney General Anil Nandlall had noted that this review will address key areas, such as enforcement of performance bonds, effectiveness of remedies, notice requirements, and the overall efficiency of procurement systems.
“We will review the regime of remedies that flow when there is a breach, and we will strengthen the regime of remedies so as to offer the state greater protection when there is breaches or non-compliance,” Nandlall had explained.
The overhaul will also focus on greater accountability for engineers and consultants.
“These engineers and/or supervisors are paid huge sums of money to monitor and evaluate the performance of the contract for and on behalf of the State… They are supposed to police the contracts, monitor and evaluate the contracts and ensure that when there are breaches, these breaches are reported and are remedied under the terms of the contract,” the Attorney General had noted, acknowledging that many times, this does not take place.
He had pointed out that, “Unfortunately, invariably, these engineers and our supervisors tend to align their interests more with the contractor than the employer.”
“For example, instead of preventing and resisting attempts at variations in contracts that would inevitably result in an upward movement of the contract price, the engineers and our supervisors support the contractor’s request for an extension. Why? Well, I can’t say why, but the engineer and/or supervisor are paid based upon that increase. Their remuneration package is tied to a variation that necessarily increases the contract price, and perhaps that is an incentive to give support. We have to ensure that that is reviewed, that state of affairs that I just outlined, a state of affairs that seems to reward rather than penalise a contractor for a variation,” Nandlall had outlined.
He had further emphasised that the responsibility of the engineer/supervisor is to prevent such variations from taking place, but instead, “the evidence will disclose that, invariably, they stand in support. And one can’t discount that one of the reasons that may be influencing that posture is a financial one, because when the variation is granted, the supervisor’s contract or the engineer’s contract is also extended.”
“That must be looked at,” Nandlall had affirmed.

Axle loads
Singh further noted that another layer in the conversation on quality control has to do with adhering to axle limits.
“All over the world, roads are being designed to handle a certain amount of axle load…most of the place around the world goes between 10 and 12 tonne per axle. In Guyana, we did not have an axle load control law that prohibits trucks from carrying heavy load,” Singh outlined.
However, he recognised that the Government has been working to address this issue. In fact, Minister of Public Works Juan Edghill announced that the Government will start impounding trucks operating above the authorised weight limits. The Government has approved a 15-tonne per axle weight limit for trucks on all national roads and bridges to prevent severe infrastructure damage.
According to Singh, sometimes the infrastructure is being damaged quickly not because of poor quality. “Many of the roads are being damaged because trucks are being overloaded,” he posited.
“A truck that’s supposed to carry 30 gross tonne in some cases have 50 tonne of cargo inside of it. Those will have a definitively negative impact,” he added.