Construction World November 2018

practitioners in the public sector who understand the difference between procuring for infrastructure development and general procurement. Campbell says, “It is for this reason that we volunteered our offer of partnership with the State shortly after the President made his ‘Thuma Mina’ address during his inauguration earlier this year. Unless we act to correct this flawed process, we will not as a country be able to afford to operate and maintain these assets optimally, as potential ‘in-built’ shortcomings through cheap designs, poor equipment choices and lack of quality supervision during construction will mean more frequent maintenance at higher cost to operations or simply that maintenance will be deferred or not done. This means re-capitalising these assets long before the 30 year design life has been reached. You end up spending twice as much in half the time.”

Campbell says, “We unashamedly would rather advocate for a more informed and holistic approach to be adopted, one that drives investment in infrastructure with a ‘long game’ vision, to use a good golf analogy. We need to drive this in a manner that ensures that future generations are not saddled with the plague of early failure of functional infrastructure or unsafe infrastructure and the continuous challenge to rebuild what should have been lasting infrastructure. It starts by commissioning the services of Built Environment Professionals who are able to deliver quality services that provide long term value solutions to lasting infrastructure now. We need to get more ‘bang for our buck’ especially at a time that our economy has flat-lined into what some would like to call a technical recession. Spending responsibly will enable more infrastructure delivery at a

time that the need for functional and lasting infrastructure grows daily.” In conclusion Campbell believes that, “We desperately need to focus on the role infrastructure investment plays in stimulating our economy by not only spending more money but spending it right.” 

CESA CEO, Chris Campbell.

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CONSTRUCTION WORLD NOVEMBER 2018