Works Ministry faced with serious shortage of experienced contractors

In discussing several challenges faced in 2017 at the Public Infrastructure Ministry, Coordinator of the Works Services Group (WSG), Geoffrey Vaughn has said that one of the greatest challenges was attracting experienced personnel for most of the major projects.

The WSG Head explained that while there was in excess of 500 plus contractors who would have been prequalified for works to be done by the Ministry, this issue kept arising throughout the year. This, according to him, is also one of the main reasons for many of the public contracts being terminated.
“With that pool, what we have been seeing is with lots of the contractors that have been tendering, there is still a shortage in terms of experienced personnel within their organisations, specifically engineers. Because what we have been seeing basically is a name appearing on the tender document, but after that process would have been completed, we are still looking for that individual once that project would have been awarded to that particular company,” he said.
To correct this issue, Vaughn said the Ministry would recommend implementing a stricter process by which these contractors were chosen. Recommendations will also be made to make provisions for the Ministry to see the individual contractors selected and their staff while tendering.
Another issue faced by the Ministry, according to Vaughn, has to do with project management. He said most contractors were taking on more work than they could handle, and the Ministry has seen many cases of this in 2017. On the other hand, most projects are not being managed effectively and efficiently.
“So you find their ending up with quite a few projects that we may know of because other agencies would have already awarded contracts to them. So, they come to you at the end and when they ask you when I’m finished with this one, then I’ll start with that one and right away the red flag goes up. And that is because you realise that the capacity is not there for them to execute the project,” he said.
Despite these challenges, the Ministry has managed to execute most of its capital projects for 2017, with fewer rollovers for the new year. However, the deadline for a majority of the Ministry’s major infrastructural projects have been pushed back or further delayed to another year.
Meanwhile, some of the major projects to be worked on this year include: the Linden- Mabura Road, Kurupukari Bridge, Parika-Goshen road, Sheriff Street-Mandela Road Project, East Bank-East Coast Road Link, Demerara River Crossing, installation of LED lights across the country, Linden-Soesdyke Highway Study and the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB)-financed study for upgrading Lethem Airport into a regional hub.