Chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott), at­tor­ney Shankar Bidaisee is on a mis­sion to en­sure the over­all vi­sion for the en­ti­ty is not on­ly ful­ly achieved but al­so re­dounds to the ben­e­fit of cit­i­zens.

He ex­plained to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian his aim is to at­tain op­ti­mum ef­fi­cien­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, ad­her­ence to lead­ing prac­tices in trans­paren­cy in­clud­ing pro­cure­ment, stake­hold­er en­gage­ment, val­ue for mon­ey and to en­sure that its na­tion­al phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment port­fo­lio trans­lates in­to over­all na­tion­al so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment for the cit­i­zens.

How would Bidaisee, who pre­vi­ous­ly served on the Ude­cott board be­tween 2010 and 2015, car­ry out these plans?

“I in­tend to en­sure that our op­er­a­tions are stream­lined with the Gov­ern­ment’s broad­er pol­i­cy ob­jec­tives of na­tion­al so­cio-eco­nom­ic, cul­tur­al and over­all de­vel­op­ment for our peo­ple. I in­tend to achieve this by en­sur­ing the man­age­ment and staff of Ude­cott are well-trained to strength­en in­ter­nal ca­pac­i­ty to chart the way for­ward,” he said.

Bidaisee al­so shared in­sights on how he in­tends to en­sure Ude­cott plays a piv­otal role in T&T’s in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment and eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

Not­ing that Ude­cott’s main client is the Gov­ern­ment, Bidaisee said it iden­ti­fies the de­vel­op­men­tal path for T&T and maps out the projects that are in­te­gral to same.

He said the Gov­ern­ment would then iden­ti­fy the ex­e­cut­ing agency, whether it be Ude­cott or one of the oth­er State de­vel­op­ment com­pa­nies, to ex­e­cute the projects.

“I will en­sure that Ude­cott plays this piv­otal role by en­sur­ing that the cor­po­ra­tion ad­heres to the reg­u­la­to­ry pro­cure­ment regime, val­ue for mon­ey, de­liv­ery on time and with­in bud­get. This will, in­ter alia, en­tail prop­er su­per­vi­sion and rig­or­ous project man­age­ment which are key fea­tures up­on which the Gov­ern­ment can place its trust and con­fi­dence in Ude­cott to get the job done ef­fec­tive­ly,” Bidaisee added.

Be­yond the stat­ed prin­ci­ples of com­pli­ance, time­lines and bud­get, he not­ed oth­er key ar­eas of fo­cus would be to en­sure that Ude­cott is placed, not on­ly to con­struct build­ings and in­fra­struc­ture, but al­so build sys­tems for prop­er ad­min­is­tra­tion and long-term func­tion­ing and main­te­nance for de­liv­ery and sus­te­nance of qual­i­ty prod­uct and ser­vice to the peo­ple of T&T.

Ude­cott has faced scruti­ny and al­le­ga­tions in the past re­gard­ing trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

How will the new chair­man en­sure good gov­er­nance, in­tegri­ty and pub­lic trust in all Ude­cott’s op­er­a­tions?

“Ques­tions will al­ways be asked,” Bidaisee said, adding, “The most im­por­tant thing is to pro­vide an an­swer that can with­stand scruti­ny. Be­tween 2010 to 2015 un­der the then stew­ard­ship of Min­is­ter John (Jear­lean John), the board en­sured that all ten­der­ing process­es were fol­lowed and all 91 rec­om­men­da­tions of the Uff Re­port were im­ple­ment­ed to en­sure good gov­er­nance, in­tegri­ty and pub­lic trust.

“The board al­lowed the staff to do its work and was guid­ed by com­pe­tent man­age­ment for trans­par­ent op­er­a­tions. This was the foun­da­tion up­on which pub­lic trust was en­gen­dered dur­ing that pe­ri­od.”

He fur­ther stat­ed that with the new pro­cure­ment regime, the board would as­sure that all de­part­ments in­clud­ing pro­cure­ment, con­tract ad­min­is­tra­tion, com­pli­ance and fi­nance, sys­tems are work­ing and the manda­to­ry Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee (PDAC) is well-trained and staffed for op­ti­mum op­er­a­tion of the cor­po­ra­tion.

Bidaisee al­so shared in­sights on how he in­tends to ad­dress po­ten­tial de­lays and cost over­runs in projects, and what mech­a­nisms would be im­ple­ment­ed to guar­an­tee projects are de­liv­ered with­in bud­get and on time.

He said the key to time­ly projects and val­ue for mon­ey is hav­ing prop­er source of fund­ing, prop­er con­tract ad­min­is­tra­tion and strict ad­her­ence to terms of en­gage­ment, pri­mar­i­ly FIDIC (Fédéra­tion In­ter­na­tionale Des In­génieurs-Con­seils/In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Con­sult­ing En­gi­neers).

“De­vel­op­ment of a re­al­is­tic project sched­ule is key. Ude­cott’s staff must hold con­trac­tors ac­count­able and in strict com­pli­ance with that sched­ule and pay­ment must be tied to per­for­mance. Cre­ation and sign-off on clear scope of works will min­imise vari­a­tions and the po­ten­tial for cost over­runs. Over­all project man­age­ment poli­cies and pro­ce­dures must be world class,” Bidaisee added.

On im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ties for Ude­cott re­gard­ing on­go­ing projects like the San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front Re­de­vel­op­ment and the In­vaders Bay De­vel­op­ment,Bidaisee said the board would be meet­ing soon to be ap­prised by man­age­ment on ex­ist­ing projects. Based on the di­rec­tions of the Gov­ern­ment, he said, Ude­cott would then know the way for­ward on those projects.

He al­so pro­vid­ed the same com­ments when asked about any new ma­jor projects or ini­tia­tives Ude­cott plans to em­bark on in the near fu­ture.

How will Ude­cott en­sure that its projects align with na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment goals and ad­dress the needs of var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties across T&T?

Re­it­er­at­ing that Ude­cott takes is in­struc­tions from the Cab­i­net, Bidaisee added that Gov­ern­ment de­ter­mines the na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment goals and Ude­cott is called up­on to play its part.

“Once in­struc­tions are giv­en to ex­e­cute a project, whether de­sign-build or oth­er­wise, and fund­ing is sourced to ex­e­cute same Ude­cott will, of course, en­gage in stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tion to en­sure mean­ing­ful and wide par­tic­i­pa­tion from the com­mu­ni­ty to in­form the di­rec­tion of its projects and to man­age im­pact. This will en­sure that projects are not stand­alone build­ings but form an in­te­gral part of the land­scape.

“For ex­am­ple, lead­ing up to the com­ple­tion of the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal in 2015, Ude­cott en­gaged in var­i­ous con­sul­ta­tions with the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties. Our peo­ple are our great­est re­source and must be treat­ed as such. Just like the San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal, the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal was de­signed and built to be ad­min­is­tered in a peo­ple-cen­tred man­ner where our peo­ple would re­ceive first-world health care as valu­able cus­tomers. This would pave the way for the de­vel­op­ment of health tourism in T&T, he ex­plained.

Bidaisee al­so shared that Ude­cott in­tends to in­cor­po­rate sus­tain­able prac­tices and en­vi­ron­men­tal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in­to its projects, con­sid­er­ing the long-term im­pact on the coun­try.

“Every project must in­volve a wide and in-depth im­pact as­sess­ment in­clud­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial, health to cli­mate change, traf­fic etc.

“One of the ob­jec­tives will be to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the im­pact of our projects on the en­vi­ron­ment to en­sure that all de­vel­op­men­tal projects, in which Ude­cott is in­volved, are sen­si­tive, in so far as is rea­son­ably prac­ti­ca­ble, to the fau­na and flo­ra and the re­duc­tion of the car­bon foot­print by in­cor­po­rat­ing en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient de­signs and sus­tain­able build­ing ma­te­ri­als,” he said.

Bidaisee jour­ney of com­ing up the ranks is in­spi­ra­tional.

Born in San­gre Grande he at­tend­ed Five Rivers Ju­nior Sec­ondary School, Ari­ma Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School, El Do­ra­do Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive School (re­peat­ing CXC) and al­so St Au­gus­tine Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive.

His hum­ble be­gin­nings were not a de­ter­rent.

Bidaisee used his sheer de­ter­mi­na­tion-do­ing var­i­ous odd jobs—rang­ing from giv­ing pri­vate lessons, work­ing in a phar­ma­cy, in­ter­pret­ing Span­ish to for­eign tour guides to pay for ex­pens­es in­ci­den­tal to his ed­u­ca­tion—which helped paved the way for at­tain­ing his achieve­ments to­day.

Apart from his law de­gree (Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don LLB Bach­e­lor of Laws Hon) he re­ceived from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, a Bach­e­lor of Arts De­gree—Span­ish (Hons), Post­grad­u­ate Diplo­ma in Ed­u­ca­tion, LLM Mas­ter of Laws—Cor­po­rate and Com­mer­cial Law and Mas­ter of Sci­ence—In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.

Bidaisee is a mem­ber of the Me­di­a­tion Board of T&T) (2014-2017) (2022-present) and mem­ber of the Med­ical Board of T&T (2023-present.)

Bidaisee con­sid­ers him­self a world trav­eller, hav­ing vis­it­ed pre­cise­ly 100 coun­tries thus far and “have ex­pe­ri­enced quite a lot of the pos­i­tive things life has to of­fer.”

He is al­so an avid an­i­mal lover, hop­ing that this coun­try would be kinder them.

“I love an­i­mals, name­ly cats and dogs. My hope for T&T is to one day have a ded­i­cat­ed na­tion­al pol­i­cy and im­ple­men­ta­tion for the hu­mane treat­ment of our beloved an­i­mals through­out the coun­try.”