The Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (RDC) con­duct­ed its first in a se­ries of train­ing work­shops for con­trac­tors on No­vem­ber 12 at Sevil­la Club, Cou­va. The work­shop was aimed at im­part­ing es­sen­tial man­age­r­i­al tools for the ef­fec­tive prepa­ra­tion of ten­ders and con­struc­tion of projects. RDC is a spe­cial-pur­pose state en­ter­prise that was es­tab­lished in 2005 to build in­fra­struc­ture in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties of Trinidad. Its man­date is to as­sist in the de­vel­op­ment of the small and medi­um con­trac­tors.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the RDC, it has com­plet­ed more than 150 projects in 26 com­mu­ni­ties through­out Trinidad. The com­pa­ny al­so com­plet­ed the in­fra­struc­ture to 13 large farms at six sites for the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture Land and Ma­rine Re­sources. Taje­lal Sar­wan, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the RDC, in open­ing re­marks at the work­shop, said that based on the RDC's ex­pe­ri­ence in its ad­min­is­tra­tion of con­tracts over the past three years, sev­er­al ar­eas of de­fi­cien­cy in ca­pa­bil­i­ty of the con­trac­tors were ob­served. Sar­wan said the mot­to for all con­trac­tors should be "do­ing it right the first time, to best qual­i­ty and on time."

Ten­ders

The work­shop was de­signed to in­form the con­trac­tors of the key is­sues that must be con­sid­ered in the prepa­ra­tion of ten­ders as well as man­age­ment of the con­tracts dur­ing con­struc­tion. The work­shop brought to­geth­er oth­er key state en­ter­pris­es that pro­vide sup­port fa­cil­i­ties for con­trac­tors com­pris­ing the Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (BDC), Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Ned­co) and Na­tion­al Quar­ries Ltd. More than 120 con­tract­ing firms at­tend­ed the work­shop. The RDC had in­vit­ed them to ten­der on in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment projects in 10 rur­al com­mu­ni­ties through­out Trinidad. The pro­gramme of ac­tiv­i­ties in­clud­ed sev­er­al pre­sen­ta­tions from RDC's man­age­ment, oth­er state en­ter­pris­es and a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency (Os­ha). The pro­gramme was chaired by Clivia Pierre, RDC's com­pa­ny sec­re­tary. Chris Ja­groop, man­ag­er of en­gi­neer­ing, ex­plained the pro­ce­dure for bid­ding, a doc­u­ment that iden­ti­fies key is­sues to be con­sid­ered in the prepa­ra­tion of the ten­der and es­sen­tial sup­port doc­u­ments to be sup­plied with the ten­der.

FIDIC

Ja­groop said the RDC will be us­ing the FIDIC (1999), short and long forms of con­tract for works de­signed by the em­ploy­er and out­lined key claus­es. He said con­trac­tors must re­frain from com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the RDC about their ten­der. Claude Bharath, fi­nance man­ag­er, spoke about the fi­nan­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of con­trac­tors and fi­nan­cial man­age­ment dur­ing the con­struc­tion of a project. Bharath dis­cussed the im­por­tance of prop­er cash man­age­ment to en­sure that work pro­gress­es con­tin­u­ous­ly. Say­ing that con­trac­tors are in busi­ness to be fi­nan­cial­ly vi­able, Bharath said prop­er record keep­ing in con­trac­tors' ac­counts de­part­ment is a key tool in man­ag­ing their fi­nances.

Cov­er­ing all costs

En­gi­neers Rus­sell Ram­rat­tan and Satyadeo Ar­joon gave par­tic­i­pants a trea­tise on the build-up of unit rates for var­i­ous types of work, con­sid­er­ing the di­rect and in­di­rect costs that make up the rates and oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions as iden­ti­fied in the pre­am­ble to the bills of quan­ti­ties. Con­trac­tors were ad­vised that in­di­rect cost will in­clude pro­vi­sions for health, safe­ty and en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion fa­cil­i­ties dur­ing con­struc­tion, along with nor­mal over­heads. Con­trac­tors were told to con­sid­er oth­er costs that may af­fect their ten­der, such as fi­nance charges for loans and over­draft fa­cil­i­ties, con­sid­er­ing the time for pay­ment. It was em­pha­sised that unit rates for items of work will be eval­u­at­ed to en­sure that they ad­e­quate­ly cov­er costs all as­so­ci­at­ed with com­plet­ing works. En­gi­neers David Alexan­der and Za­yid Al­leyne gave guid­ance on the man­age­ment of con­tracts dur­ing con­struc­tion. They said a suc­cess­ful project is one that is com­plet­ed to the re­quired qual­i­ty and con­fig­u­ra­tion and with­in time and bud­get with min­i­mal in­con­ve­nience to the com­mu­ni­ties.

Con­struc­tion, safe­ty

Par­tic­i­pants were ad­vised that prop­er man­age­ment of con­tracts will en­sure suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of projects. Con­trac­tors were in­formed that RDC ful­ly sup­ports Os­ha, and reg­u­lar­ly col­lab­o­rates with the as­signed safe­ty of­fi­cer. Taz­im Sal­im, of Os­ha, said the Oc­cu­pa­tion Health and Safe­ty Act is now law and gave an in­depth pre­sen­ta­tion of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the con­trac­tors to their work­ers and the pub­lic in en­sur­ing that works are con­duct­ed in man­ner that is safe, pos­es no health risks and is sen­si­tive to the preser­va­tion of the en­vi­ron­ment. Sal­im said the statu­to­ry com­pli­ance by the con­trac­tors and that in­spec­tions of the projects will be con­duct­ed pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly with RDC's rep­re­sen­ta­tives to en­sure com­pli­ance. Sal­im said al­though Os­ha had the pow­er to pros­e­cute, it was tak­ing the course of as­sist­ing con­trac­tors in achiev­ing com­pli­ance with the leg­is­la­tion as a first step.

Fi­nanc­ing

Roann David and Shel­don Blugh, of the Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (BDC), ex­plained the pro­ce­dure to ac­cess the BDC's fi­nan­cial prod­ucts. They said the BDC had set up a sub­sidiary com­pa­ny to pro­vide leas­ing arrange­ments for the sup­ply of tools and equip­ment to con­trac­tors. Con­trac­tors were al­so made aware of the ad­van­tages of leas­ing over pur­chas­ing equip­ment. Faiz Ramjohn, of Ned­co, gave a sum­ma­ry of the pro­ce­dure for ac­cess­ing its fa­cil­i­ties and the var­i­ous types of busi­ness ven­tures that will qual­i­fy for fund­ing.