You cannot find a single government project whether it is a tunnel, a bridge, an airport, a school or a hospital without faults of some kind or another. The problem is that these faults are usually not discovered during the time of the delivery of the project or before its actual operation. They are rather discovered months or years later. Many of the municipality chiefs I have spoken to hold the contractor responsible for most of the faults although they say that there are other parties involved. The classified contractor has the right to bid for any government project, therefore, he may be implementing a number of projects at the same time. This will cause him to lose control of the execution of some of these projects, and, therefore, their execution may be delayed. The Ministry of Finance must accept part of the blame for faltering government projects because of its policy of offering projects to the lowest bidder.
There should be a way out through the provision of new contractors and the support of existing ones. It is obvious that the development projects in the Kingdom are beyond the ability of contractors so the government has asked Saudi Aramco to enter the field of construction and contracting. This is a clear indication that we lack qualified contractors who can execute projects on time and according to specifications and standards. We have to open the door for new contractors even if they are from outside. More important than this is the need to solve the problems facing contractors during the execution period and to respond to their needs and requirements without delay. We should also punish those contractors who delay the execution of government projects awarded to them. The contractor may qualify for bidding but he may not know if the project will be implemented on time due to unforeseen problems. The government does not have project management departments which is crucial for the perfect implementation of projects. Each government department should have a special project management unit to monitor the execution of projects. This unit will know if the project will be completed on time or not. It will also know if contractors are committed or not. We should review the rules and regulations of offering government projects. We should also make it imperative that contractors thoroughly abide by contracts. It is the accomplishment that counts not how many contracts we have signed.
