Rapheal John-Lall

The best way to get con­struc­tion projects done on time and with­in bud­get is through the pub­lic pri­vate part­ner­ship (PPP) mod­el, said Joseph Ra­hael, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Am­era Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Ltd. "Once the PPP mod­el is used, it places the risk in the hands of the peo­ple who are best equipped to man­age that risk and, in this case, it is the pri­vate sec­tor de­vel­op­ers. At the end of the day, this mod­el trans­fers the risk away from the Gov­ern­ment to the pri­vate sec­tor where there is no chance of project de­lays or cost over­runs. Many gov­ern­ments in the world use this as their pre­ferred method­ol­o­gy. It can be done for schools, hos­pi­tals, sta­di­ums and oth­er projects," he told the Busi­ness Guardian.

He said the Gov­ern­ment's method­ol­o­gy of ex­e­cut­ing projects is "flawed." "They have been em­bark­ing on the tra­di­tion­al de­sign, bid, build method­ol­o­gy of con­struc­tion, which means that they form an agency like the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) and they task that agency with get­ting the de­signs done, hir­ing project man­agers, en­ter­ing in­to con­tracts and ex­e­cut­ing work on this ba­sis. A gov­ern­ment is not equipped to man­age that ap­proach be­cause of how the pri­vate sec­tor runs," he said.

Ra­hael gave the ex­am­ple of the $140 mil­lion Mil­sh­erv project, the of­fice ac­com­mo­da­tion for the En­vi­ron­ment and Ma­rine Di­vi­sion of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA). "Last Oc­to­ber, it was giv­en the go ahead by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and it keeps in line with the PPP mod­el the Min­is­ter (of Fi­nance) has been talk­ing about. It is the prop­er mod­el for the Gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor to come to­geth­er to ex­e­cute projects," he said. He said when the Gov­ern­ment takes on the risk, this could cause "dis­as­ter."