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The consistent lack of quantity surveyors in government departments is the root of infrastructure budget misspending.
This is the belief of the executive director of the association of South African quantity surveyors, Larry Feinberg, who told City Press that “placing more quantity surveyors within government organs of state and municipalities would help root out corruption.”
These construction industry professionals have expert knowledge on construction costs and contracts.
But they also feature on the South African list of critical skills.
“Why are they [government] not recruiting more quantity surveyors when the narrative right now in this country is to root out corruption,” asked Feinberg.
Worrying audit outcomes
In November last year, South Africa’s Auditor-General, Kimi Makwetu, released the audit results of the country’s consolidated audit outcomes of national and provincial governments and their entities for the 2017/18 financial year.
From the results Makwetu reported that “unauthorised expenditure in the country had increased by 38% to R2.1 billion, with the department of public works and infrastructure being one of the departments that received the poorest audits.
At the time Makwetu said: “Overall, the audit outcomes regressed – at both departments and public entities. We are now sitting at R 2 billion overall in unauthorised expenditure.”
Importance of quantity surveyors
Feinberg added: “Quantity surveyors should be the first people government officials phone to find out why a project is over budget. It should be the quantity surveyor, not the architect not the engineer or anybody else. It is the quantity surveyor who is specialised in dealing with the holistic construction budget.”
Earlier this year Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure Patricia de Lille called for an overhaul of her department’s register and intensified action against corrupt officials after more corruption revelations were uncovered.
In July, De Lille announced that all tenders issued by her department would be open for public scrutiny, from evaluating the documents to the adjudication, in a bid to root out corruption related to leases, and ensure that land and assets owned by the state are “used for the public good”.
Specialised skills
In August, City Press reported that De Lille’s quest of an overhaul included getting rid of officials who were irregularly appointed between 2017 and last year.
Chairperson of the built environment matters committee on the Council for the Built Environment Zandile Makhathini stressed the importance of “recognising that a quantity surveyor’s skills are specialised and greatly needed on construction projects.”
“Engineers and construction managers do not have the same skills as professional quantity surveyors,” she said.
With her department mandated to be custodian and portfolio manager of the national government’s immovable assets, Makhathini noted with great concern how there are “virtually no quantity surveyors within many government departments.”
She said: “Government departments need to make roles for quantity surveyors available at competitive salaries so that they can control costs and help us derive value from our building projects and assets.”
“The lack of competitive salaries for quantity surveyors is one of the biggest reasons for the lack of professional expertise within the department. There is currently one quantity surveyor and three candidate surveyors who manage the projects that make up the R12 billion budget of the department.”
It was a sentiment shared by Feinberg: “Quantity Surveyors are professionals. They go through a process of recognition and acceptance into a council and they need to reach a certain level of professionalism and have a certain amount of experience as well as academic requirement in order to progress to that level. In much the same way as an architect is able to charge professional fees, quantity surveyors are as well,” he told City Press.
“There is a disparity in government in terms of not being able to either have the appropriate resources devoted to recruiting quantity surveyors - who are the best placed people to manage entire construction budgets.
“Government is not attracting the required services of quantity surveyors and yet the one or two that are recruited within government ranks are now responsible for overseeing a large number of projects. They cannot be asked to provide the kind of detail and scrutiny to each of these projects with an oversight of projects to the value of sometimes R10 billion to R15 billion,” Feinberg said.
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