Work progress vs the safety factor

In my opinion, few are those developers (clients) who make it their business to ensure that the contractor they appoint is fully complying with laws and regulations. More often than not, the main interest of some developers boils down to the three essentials: completion on time, best quality workmanship and at the cheapest possible price.

However, one cannot blame the developer all the time. He is usually made to wait for a building permit for months and years on end. When the necessary permits are finally issued, the developer wants to move fast, and, if at all possible, he endeavours to make up for time lost because to the developer time is money. As a result of this situation, all sorts of pressures are then exercised on the appointed contractor by forcing him to accept unrealistic completion dates, heavy penalties for late completion and the like.

Speed and quality do not often marry, let alone spending time and money to ensure safety on site! One has to bear in mind that for a contractor to implement and maintain all the health and safety regulations on site he must spend money.

When calls for tender are issued both in the private and the public sector, the architects/estimators responsible are still omitting items in the preliminaries section of the bill of quantities to cover health and safety procedures, limiting themselves to inserting the words "Included in the rates".

In my opinion this is totally wrong and unfair. When a tender document is prepared, certain items in the preliminaries should be pre-priced by the architect/estimator or anybody representing the client. Items such as health and safety, hoardings, house keeping, works records, barriers, hazard lights and signage, testing of materials and plant, project management and insurance should carry a price tag and the total of these items transferred to the summary page. In this way, all bidders will be competing on the same level playing field. Otherwise, there will be contractors who, in submitting their tender, would have failed to account for such items of works with the result that when they are finally awarded the job they would find it difficult, if not impossible, to implement the works to the full satisfaction of the client as they would have already sharpened their pencil when pricing the tender. They would have no room for manoeuvre.

In some cases, some developers themselves insist on their architect to do away with the preliminaries. This "diktat" should not be accepted by the professionals. Needless to say, the afore-mentioned items would be priced according to the size, magnitude and type of project at issue.

• Project managers and site foremen - The lack of skilled tradesmen in the construction industry has long been felt. As I have mentioned earlier on, it is dangerous, to say the least, for a contractor to employ workers who never worked on a building site before. It is even worse to run a project without a suitable project manager and/or site foreman permanently on site.

It is a known fact that on this island there exists only a handful of persons who are experienced enough to qualify for the role of a project manager. I know of a number of long-established building and civil engineering contractors who employ suitable project managers. However, more often than not, even in such cases, the employer is, regrettably, more concerned with the progress of the works than with the safety factor, that is, that the man responsible is ensuring safety on site.

Little do project managers realise that they are held criminally responsible should it be proved that a fatal accident on site occurred as a result of negligence on the part of the contractor. Come to think of it, taking into account the number of ongoing sizable projects, I seriously doubt whether enough suitable and experienced project managers are available. I can say the same in respect of the dearth of trained and experienced tower crane operators to take control of the number of cranes mushrooming all over the island.

To drive a car one must be in a possession of a driving licence and should be over 18 years of age. Likewise, is it not opportune to enforce that tower crane operators should be experienced, licenced and of a certain age to operate such a machine - a machine that could be of an immediate danger to adjoining property, the public and the workers on site if not properly handled and operated by a qualified and experienced person? Is it possible that all tower crane operators never go sick? What happens if they do? Is there an assistant who is equally qualified to take over? I have to admit that it is not the first time that I, personally, witnessed unqualified and unskilled foreign labourers operating tower cranes.

One cannot blame the contractor all the time. Nor can one blame the worker who has not been trained to cope with this sudden change and with the huge demands in the construction industry. It is useless to penalise a contractor or a developer when it is too late, or, when, unfortunately a life is lost, or, perhaps, when one has been rendered permanently disabled.

I do not wish to sound in any way patronising or to convey the impression that there are no valid and bona fide contractors in Malta. Far from being the case. Reliable and good contractors there are, but these are a few. These are the ones that try their best, provide a living to thousands of workers, employ the right qualified people, and carry a substantial amount of overheads. At the end of their financial year, most unfortunately, they find out they just broke even or, in many cases, that they are in the red. The reason for this unhappy state of affairs is that these contractors find themselves competing with other contractors, the so-called "cowboys", who undercut prices, take shortcuts. These are the culprits who do not abide by the specifications and conditions of the contract let alone by the health and safety regulations. Apart from the fact that some of these contractors think and, perhaps, even believe they are above the law and consider themselves the "untouchables".

Mr Xuereb was a building and civil engineering contractor. He is now retired.

Concluded