State sector needs qualified Quantity Surveyors - Dr. Chandana Jayalath

With the boom in the construction industry the government sector needs qualified Quantity Surveyors and construction specialists at top-level decision-making positions, said Dr. Chandana Jayalath.

Due to the non-availability of such professionals at the Attorney General's office, Treasury and relevant ministries and government agencies, the government has incurred huge losses in public sector infrastructure projects, he said in an interview with Sunday Observer Business.

He is an accredited mediator in construction industry dispute-resolution and is the senior Cost Consultant at the Crescent Development Project, which will be a world- renowned skyscraper on the Caspian Sea bordering Azerbaijan.

If I say Quantity Surveying is 'vague' by profession, would you agree?

I have to agree to some extent that the title 'Quantity Surveyor' conjures a variety of different images among those who are not familiar with it. Quantity Surveying is basically measuring inputs and outputs for proposed and completed works. It started as a practice, a profession, and now it is an applied science and goes upto even post doctoral level.

There are PhDs in Quantity Surveying. For some, the title 'Quantity Surveyor' is outmoded and they argue that it no longer describes the specific role that is undertaken by quantity surveyors. There were quantity surveyors in Britain, before the Napoleonic Wars. They had to calculate costs of construction inputs.

The origins can be traced back to ancient Egyptian civilisation where estimates for their magnificent structures were given by some dedicated personnel. It developed into an occupation during the 17th century with the restoration of London after the Great Fire.

In 1836, the profession entered its new age when the new Houses of Parliament of Britain, designed by Sir Charles Barry, became the first major public contract to be measured and tendered using detailed bills of quantities. Estimators were a recognised trade also involved in early stage estimating for the owner and later estimating costs of inputs of the Master Builder.

The first recorded instance of a Bill of Quantities produced by Henry Hunt is for the reconstruction of the palace of Westminster. Through the centuries, Quantity Surveying emerged to be one of the most demanding proffessions in the construction industry. In the eighties, it expanded its role and in the nineties it changed direction towards management while in the new millennium, with the rapid development of IT, to e-business and Building Information Modeling.

What do they actually do in terms of service delivery and could you explain their importance in a project?

The services that could be offered by quantity surveyor are preliminary cost advice, cost planning, advising on procurement methods, tender process administration, evaluating input and output in construction work, financial reporting, technical auditing, and dealing with claims.

The function is, therefore, technical, managerial and even strategic. A good quantity surveyor has to have the ability to analyse cost components of a construction project in a scientific way. The results of such analysis must be applied to a variety of financial and economic problems confronting the developer and the designer.

Given the large amount of money associated with construction projects, 'value for money' is what ultimately makes the quantity surveyor an important person. This job has to taken seriously concern as the size, quality and scope of the project and even to decide whether to go ahead with the project proposal is heavily influenced by the ballpark figure established at the early cost advice.

If actual costs exceeds predicted costs, the viability of the project may vanish, possibly leaving the client bankrupt, the building abandoned and resources wasted, creating disputes. The second point is 'dispute free project delivery' which means that the quantity surveyor must be equipped to tackle the commercial and contractual issues so as not to delay completion and not to overrun the budget.

Quantity Surveyors are still a rare community and they have job opportunities outside. Are we liberal enough to cater to this need?

Your question needs a clear explanation. The first Sri Lankan Quantity Surveyor to work outside the country was unrecorded.

Many hundreds have had the opportunity to work in the gulf region despite no state mechanism to boost it. Those who had Mahaweli experience got a good break when foreign private companies started business in the Gulf region with the discovery of oil in the early1970s.

The first graduate Quantity Surveyor to fly to this region was in 1992 and this journey was indeed a landmark. However, exploring international territory is really competitive and volatile, particularly with the influx of other nationalities. The Gulf has no lay clients.

They are also educated and invest money to become the best. What matters are timely compliance, accurate analysis and proper judgment. Being liberal does not mean you open a floodgate. It is quality more than quantity that counts. So, whoever undertakes educational programs must keep this in mind otherwise our market will soon be endangered.

Do you think something is wrong with the system, I mean, in providing education?

There are businessmen who have invested some money and started private institutions targeting the Gulf region. I have no objection to private education as long as it is spearheaded, at least at arms length by an entity, that is accountable. The Institute of Quantity Surveyors, Sri Lanka has to set standards for quantity surveying education. It has a watchdog role.

If the standards, the institute are ignored then it cannot be overlooked. I heard that there are more than 15 Quantity Surveying courses in Colombo and the suburbs, promising five-star salaries in the Middle East.

Let me say, there will be 'no star' if we start sending half -baked six-month 'broiler chicken'. I tell parents to be vigilant and be aware of advertisements regarding affiliations to various foreign universities.

Do you known there is a trend for M.Scs in Quantity Surveying for example in the UK? Why can't this program be promoted here?

Anything has to be meaningful and gauged in the local context. Basically the M.Sc is for professionals, filling an academic gap in their career. For example, we have BSc in Civil Engineering and M.Sc in Structural Engineering. Similarly, there are Mscs for Cost Modeling or Bidding Strategies or Development Appraisals or even Dispute Resolution but not for Quantity Surveying.

Quantity Surveying is primarily a profession and any secondary discipline can be mastered. It is as simple as that. Unfortunately, I find that MScs are being conducted on a distance learning basis. Students engage in minimal course-work from a few selected text books, get on to Wikipedia and cut and paste and have no lecture-room interaction. When the number of learning hours is calculated, it is just one-sixteenth compared to a full -time internal BSc degree.

Who is cheating whom? Let me also make the point as to why a university of the calibre of the University of Peradeniya cannot start a B.Sc in Quantity Surveying by increasing the annual total intake by another hundred. I think we must look at it optimistically without getting various barriers into the discussions.

Do you find any barrier to entry?

When we passed out, many viewed it as a threat to their conservative systems, but with the passage of time, people understood, particularly private sector clients how they could be used for their benefit. For example, have you ever seen a Quantity Surveyor sitting in a government office as a Manager, Director, or a Commissioner. I mean at decision-making level before talking about national policy-making level. There can be consultants, a term that is elastic, temporary and honorary.

Let me quote a simple analogy. In the old days, mothers gave birth to their children at home perhaps with the assistance of a redi nenda. We heard of MBBS doctors in the early part of the 1960s. Then Kolomba Maha Dostara in the 1970s. Today, we get neurologists, neurosurgeons, neuro physicians. This is specialisation - a fact that we have to accept.

Therefore, it is high time we changed our mindset if we really want to harness the potential of new sciences. Looking back at the manner in which the professions have evolved, developed and established, there is a history of diversification demanded by genuine circumstances in society. A recent example in the Middle East is the Forensic Delay Analyst who is basically a Quantity Surveyor with a planning and claims background.

Are you suggesting that there is no place for Quantity Surveyors in the government sector?

Quantity surveyors have been in the state sector since the time of the Public Works Department. Most of these placements were ad-hoc, contract or project basis, involved in a very limited sphere of work; measurement and evaluation. What has to be done is simple. First accept in principle the importance of Quantity Surveyors, and then revisit the schemes of recruitment that belong to 'grandmother's time' and absorb young graduates and chartered qualified Quantity Surveyors to the right position compatible with the other allied professionals.

I identify four pillars to do that, the Institute of Quantity Surveyors, Sri Lanka, the line Ministry of Construction, Public Administration and the Salaries and Cadres Commission or whoever is responsible. In any developed country, in the Gulf region or even in the former Soviet region, most of which are emerging economies, they have cadres in the state sector for quantity surveyors, with clearly demarcated job specifications at each level (site, project, area and corporate), line of responsibility so that the quantity surveyors know where they stand, what their responsibilities are, salary levels, channel of communication, and also go up the ladder.

We have technical level Quantity Surveyors, senior level, managerial and advisory level Quantity Surveyors, largely involved in policy making. They strategise models for governments before embarking on world renowned projects to earn money. I have not come across such an opportunity in Sri Lanka for these professionals to serve in the state sector.

In the Sri Lankan context, how do you perceive claims and disputes? Are they inevitable or controllable?

It is not wrong to say that Sri Lanka is becoming a gateway to claims. The trend is that claims specialists are mobilised on international contracts even before construction commences, to find loopholes in the documents and look for lapses in the process of contract administration.

We remember how Balfour Beatty won claims of millions of rupees at the end of the Colombo-Kandy road project. Claims are a huge industry. The Southern Expressway project experienced a Rs 4.6 billion claim against the Government. In such cases, Quantity Surveyors must adopt effective cost control mechanisms to ensure that the project is delivered within the allocated budget.

This is why the importance of deploying qualified Quantity Surveyors has become so significant now than ever before, predominantly in the state sector having large-scale foreign-funded projects where the funds are generally taken back 'home' via loop hole engineering.

When we come to disputes, we have good lessons outside our country. What the parties need is something that works well, indeed works faster, cheaper, and less contentious. Parties strongly believe in a process in which the parties retain the right to decide the outcome of their dispute, rather than a court order or an arbitral award.

In the Qatar public works for example, we are 'internalising' the dispute by way of a neutral whose role is facilitative and evaluative. Such an arrangement avoids the formalities in arbitration and litigation. Unlike arbitration, they are not generally undertaken within the confines of procedural rules or subsidiary legislation.

Instead, they closely resemble expert inputs and accepted norms of the building trade. They give advisory opinions when parties need guidance on technical matters to prevent further disputes. Therefore, the neutrals may function as a preventing device permanently installed for the duration of the contract.

When a dispute does arise, it is given early attention and addressed contemporaneously which avoids the commonly encountered situation of the engineer and arbitrator being too busy to address a voluminous claim. Because of the familiarity with the project, facts are better understood by them in dealing with the dispute.

This is important as in many projects, the same staff rarely remains till completion which often deprives the arbitrator the benefit of their first-hand know-how of events. What I find is that parties who act in good faith are likely to comply with a recommendation just as they would accept a decision anyway.

This EBS mechanism also eases out the dilemma of the engineer's representative in three distinct roles; as the agent in protecting the interests of the employer, in an independent role when acting as a valuer and a certifier and in a consultative capacity between employer and contractor.

Because of these contrasting roles in the same project, the contractors have been suspicious of impartiality bearing in mind that the engineer's representative is remunerated by the employer acting under a separate agreement with the employer to which the contractor is not a party. As such, this internal independent body avoids problems associated with the involvement of engineer's representative traditionally in the settlement process.

What is your opinion about the expansion of the local construction industry?

Let us look at the statistics. The construction sub sector recorded an impressive growth of 21.6 percent in 2012 compared to 14.2 percent in 2011. This is the highest growth registered in the past ten years, contributing 8.1 percent of the overall GDP and 23.9 percent of the change in GDP growth from 2011 to 2012.

The private sector contributed particularly in hotel and housing construction activities. Loans and advances by commercial banks to the private sector for construction grew by 22.9 percent in 2012, compared to 14.5 percent in 2011.

The construction sector expanded with the acceleration of the ongoing road development projects such as expressways, inter-regional national highways and mega construction projects and urban development projects and the construction of houses and reconstruction work in newly liberated areas boosted construction activity in the country.

As a professional dealing with construction economics, what is your approach to steer the construction industry towards the next decade?

Construction activities involve a good deal of 'contracting'. On account of the higher number of participants, there will be correspondingly a higher number of contract agreements. A greater number of participants means fragmentation of responsibilities in the supply chain. Also, some of the problems that beset the running of the project are not foreseeable or even if they are foreseeable, their magnitude may not be foreseeable. However, none of these will be barriers provided construction professionals look after their own part while guiding politicians in the right direction.

This is because professionals can make and act on informed decisions in situations that others cannot. They are trained to produce certain outcomes which take moral precedence over other functions of society. This co-habitation is of timely significance.

G.W