President Dr. Irfaan Ali charged contractors to expedite their work but to ensure that quality is maintained as Guyana continues to go through a revolutionary period of growth and development. He said that the Government of Guyana has had it with contractors who pussyfoot on projects and compromise standards.
He said that timely completion of projects is a major issue that is important for both the Government and contractors to address. He explained that there will be an assessment of every contractor and project executed at the end of the year and that a demerit system would be developed.
“The demerit system is that the net value of outstanding work will be transferred to the new year and will become your net value of work in progress that would disallow you from having new contracts or a certain level of new contracts. That too will be in the bidding document by agency.”
There will also be a performance-based award system in addition to the price and technical qualification system that is currently in place.
“I want you to understand what is going to take place in this country and why it is so important that we pull our socks up, and why is it so important that we have this conversation,” he said at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC) at Liliendaal, East Coast Demerara yesterday.
He added that there is always room for growth and that contractors must learn to take constructive criticism and underscored that a contractor who is bidding for and being awarded large projects that fall over $100M should not be bidding for small regional projects.
“Absolute nonsense for you and for us because there is something called economies of scale, and allocation of resources, allocation of material, human financial and material resources. And if you are a tier-one contractor, and you want to spend the time to allocate resources on a $5M project, you will bust. You will not be able to efficiently implement or achieve your outcome.”
He also pointed out that when contractors who operate at a large scale go after small contracts, they take away from the small contractors and damage their own business model.
He made it clear that he has no problem with contractors having multiple contracts, but he has an issue with there being a lack of understanding that contracts have to be done simultaneously.
