ROSE HALL, St James – Prime Minister Golding yesterday invited the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) to guide his administration’s endeavours to immunise the country’s construction industry from contractual and other forms of abuse.

Speaking to the need for legislature to enforce established procurement guidelines and by extension, preserve the competitive aspects of the industry, as well as the need for the establishment of an independent factor to guard against runaway escalation costs in construction, Golding pointed to what he said was a “serious situation” here.

“Very often a project starts at $50 million and at the end of the day it’s $100 million, and sometimes the changes take place with an automaticity that is worrying,” he told some 150 RICS delegates at yesterday’s opening of their two-day conference at the Ritz Carlton Rose Hall.

Under the new paradigm, Golding wants cost variations that give rise to increases of over 10 per cent to go back to the body that initially approved the project. “It may be a bit more bureacratic, but it’s an important safeguard to control runaway costs,” he told journalists after the conference.

The prime minister also pointed to the need for legislation governing the affairs of the National Contracts Committee and the contractor general to be separated, even as the government seeks to adopt a more interventionist role in the industries related to land, property and construction.

“We have already authorised the amendment of the Financial Administration and Audit Act to include the possibility of surcharging public officials who breach the procurement guidelines, but in reviewing the legislation it is my view that we need to remove the National Contracts Committee provisions from the Contractor General’s Act and establish that as its own statute,” he said. “I think that there is an inherent conflict where the powers of the contractor general who is supposed to monitor and audit the projects are so juxtaposed with the Committee.”

A delicate balance is also to be struck between the simplification of contract procurement guidelines and the preservation of checks and balances to guarantee integrity, the prime minister told journalists following the opening of the conference.

Dubbed ‘Managing Risk, Maximising Reward: Winning at High Stakes Development’, the conference will facilitate the sharing of best practices and knowledge under several topics aimed at achieving sustainable development.

Among them are:

. Finding optimal capital and structuring optimal deals in a global economy;

. Building design and project management; and

. Marketing, legal and environmental challenges.

According to Louis Armstrong, chief executive officer of RICS, his organisation would be passing on a wealth of information to the government.