The Anatomy of Waste and Inefficiency in Engineering Construction

By W. X. Mascarenhas

Summary

Drawing on a career as Chief Engineer of an Indian state, W. X. Mascarenhas delivers a procedural and managerial autopsy of waste in Indian engineering construction, focused chiefly on Government and quasi-Government Public Works Departments. The text is the printed version of a public lecture delivered under the auspices of the Forum of Free Enterprise on 20 February 1970, framed at the outset as ‘constructive criticism’ of general application rather than censure of any particular agency.

Mascarenhas enumerates six procedural roots of waste and inefficiency: (1) the crash-programme planning of even large projects, which produces speculative tendering, collusion between planner and contractor and unavoidable cost over-runs; (2) the perpetuation of fifty-year-old Schedules of Rates and specifications that no longer correspond to available materials and craftsmanship, leaving ‘a powerful lever in the hands of corrupt or just wooden-headed officials’ to harass contractors; (3) the rule of automatic acceptance of the lowest tender, which he proposes replacing with the foreign practice of awarding contracts to the bid closest to the average; (4) the bureaucratic delay of Running Account Bills and Final Bills, sometimes by three or four years, which pushes up contract rates by forcing contractors to borrow at usurious rates; (5) the rigid Earnest Money and Security Deposit regime, which he proposes liberalising through Bank Guarantees and parity with manufacturing for industrial finance; and (6) the one-sided contract in which the Government Owner becomes ‘complainant, prosecutor and judge,’ for which he urges arbitration by an independent panel under the Indian Arbitration Act.

His institutional fix is the creation of a Public Works Commission — recruited from senior engineers of unimpeachable character on attractive ten-year salaries, statutorily barred from post-retirement contractor employment — to absorb the existing Technical Examiner’s cell, audit R. A. Bills and the efficacy of planning, and discipline departmental engineers for slip-shod work. He then turns to technical reforms long overdue: ultimate-strength design procedures for RCC (a case-study at the Structural Engineering Research Centre, Roorkee, showed 42% steel savings); light-weight concrete and Siporex (25-30% savings, finally cleared after a four-year delay with the Government of Maharashtra); mechanised quality control of asphaltic road surfaces; pre-cast units for low-cost housing; and a more receptive attitude to indigenous innovations such as the tetrapod sea-wall armour used at Marine Drive in Bombay, collector wells with radial slotted drains, and Prof. Taraporevala’s Tarapore Truss adopted by the Baroda Municipal Corporation. Mascarenhas closes by calling for systematic training in construction management and estimates that speedy implementation of his suggestions would yield overall savings of 10-15%.

Key points

• The text is a printed Forum of Free Enterprise booklet of a 20 February 1970 public lecture by W. X. Mascarenhas, a former Chief Engineer of a state, generalising about Public Sector (and mutatis mutandis Private Sector) engineering construction.

• Mascarenhas identifies six procedural causes of waste: incomplete planning and crash-programming, obsolete specifications, the lowest-tender rule, delayed payment of Running Account and Final Bills, the rigid Earnest Money/Security Deposit regime, and the one-sided nature of Government contracts.

• He flags ‘speculative tendering’, collusion between planner and contractor on rate-splitting, and the disciplinary cover that 50-year-old Schedules of Rates provide for harassment by minor officials.

• He recommends a statutory Public Works Commission of senior engineers — recruited from open market or PWD cadres, debarred from contractor employment for seven years after retirement — to absorb the Technical Examiner’s cell and police R. A. Bill payments.

• He proposes arbitration under the Indian Arbitration Act by an independent panel of experienced engineers of repute who are not serving officers or contractor employees, rather than by an officer of the same Department.

• He urges adoption of ultimate-strength design procedures for RCC (citing a Roorkee Structural Engineering Research Centre case-study showing 42% steel savings), Siporex light-weight concrete (25-30% cost savings), and quality control / mechanisation of asphaltic road surfaces.

• He recounts personal experience introducing tetrapod breakwater armouring (Marine Drive, Bombay), collector wells with radial slotted drains, and Prof. Taraporevala’s Tarapore Truss as instances of engineering conservatism delaying cheaper, better techniques.

• He estimates that speedy implementation of his suggestions would secure overall cost economies of ‘nothing less than 10% to 15%’ and reduce corruption.

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