The Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors has called for government’s policy intervention to address the challenges of defective infrastructure budgeting and planning processes.
“Government’s provision of consistent and supportive policies that will address and curb the current problems of defective budgeting, planning, high import dependence and expatriate dominance of the engineering sector is strongly advocated,” the institute noted.
According to the NIQ, a collaborative action is also required from all sectors to curtail the current high import dependence of industrial and manufacturing projects and its attendant high cost of execution.
The institution, in a communiqué issued at the end of its two-day workshop in Enugu State, noted that the current cost monitoring and reporting methods needed to shift from monthly financial statements and final account to a weekly, daily, hourly and even real-time in order to have better positive impact on engineering project performance.
The communiqué read in part, “There is therefore an urgent and dire need for the nation’s quantity surveyors to take the front seat by showcasing their superior ability to measure and cost manage government’s enormous investment in engineering work, which as of 2012, going by the Bureau for Public Procurement’s publication on governments total budgetary allocation to building projects and engineering work, stood at two per cent and 98 per cent, respectively.
“The inability to do so would mean an exclusion of quantity surveyors in government’s major investment projects and the consequent loss of benefits of value creation, prudence and accountability. Contract award on engineering projects should be made only to competent firms that have the capacity to implement financial planning and cash budgeting regimes.”
According to the institute, prominence should be given to the project scope definition, and the utilisation of project planning, scheduling, estimating, budgeting and management tools in the effective cost management of infrastructure and engineering projects.
It also called for the maintenance of a comprehensive cost databank, statistical treatment of inflation and cost escalations, as well as project management software applications.
“These are key competences the quantity surveyor can deploy in the effective cost management of engineering costs. The low utilisation of quantity surveyors as experts trained in the measurement for the procurement of engineering infrastructures in the country was found to be a core factor responsible for the exorbitant cost of their execution,” it added.
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