Sean Nero

Even as the con­struc­tion sec­tor bat­tles with the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment over out­stand­ing mon­ey for work done un­der the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion, it still wants to es­tab­lish a well-knit work­ing re­la­tion­ship with the State, ac­cord­ing to Mark Ray­mond, pres­i­dent of the T&T In­sti­tute of Ar­chi­tects (TTIA). In a Sun­day Guardian in­ter­view, he said his or­gan­i­sa­tion was seek­ing di­a­logue with the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led ad­min­is­tra­tion to ex­plore ways to jump start this coun­try's stag­nant econ­o­my. "This doesn't mean huge con­tracts," he said. "I'm not talk­ing about mon­ey. I'm talk­ing about sur­vival and sus­tain­ing re­sources and mak­ing sure that the type of work that ex­ists is use­ful, is ben­e­fi­cial and it en­gages and main­tains the re­sources that we have. That's what we're look­ing to do."

Ray­mond said TTIA want­ed Gov­ern­ment to di­a­logue with the in­dus­try, through the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil and oth­er or­gans on im­por­tant is­sues that re­late to con­struc­tion, so­ci­ety and the econ­o­my com­bined.

In his view, this type of re­la­tion­ship would al­low the con­struc­tion sec­tor and the State to evolve and de­vel­op ways col­lec­tive­ly to ad­dress the coun­try's eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion. He said: "The last gov­ern­ment de­ter­mined­ly and de­lib­er­ate­ly re­moved them­selves from that di­a­logue...for what­ev­er the rea­son. And I'm not even in­ter­est­ed in what that rea­son is any­more. "This Gov­ern­ment came in with a promise of be­ing a gov­ern­ment of the peo­ple and I think the as­sump­tion is, that will re­quire some di­a­logue. So, we are ex­pect­ing that di­a­logue. We want that en­gage­ment." Ray­mond said the last Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment regime pro­mot­ed Ude­cott as a ve­hi­cle for de­vel­op­ment, but the type of de­vel­op­ment the state-owned com­pa­ny was en­gaged in was com­mer­cial. "Ur­ban de­vel­op­ment can take many forms. Ur­ban de­vel­op­ment doesn't mean big high rise build­ings. Ur­ban de­vel­op­ment can mean pro­vid­ing ad­e­quate green spaces or com­mu­ni­ties. It could mean pro­vid­ing ad­e­quate light­ing...it could mean pro­vid­ing ad­e­quate ac­cess on the pro­vi­sion of health fa­cil­i­ties. All those things need to be de­signed. To be en­gi­neered, they need to be planned," he said.

Ray­mond added: "...And, to en­gi­neer, de­sign and plan them you need ar­chi­tects, en­gi­neers and plan­ners. And you need con­trac­tors to build them. If you want to de­ter­mine a good way at do­ing that you need to have di­a­logue be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and these in­di­vid­u­als." He said the con­struc­tion sec­tor had a great deal to of­fer to the man in the street in terms of im­prov­ing the en­vi­ron­ment, but it re­quired en­gage­ment, un­der­stand­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Gov­ern­ment. "It's what our mem­bers are com­mit­ted to. It's not about mon­ey or con­tracts. It's about con­tribut­ing mean­ing­ful­ly to the for­ma­tion of a much bet­ter so­ci­ety and ad­vanc­ing our so­ci­ety in a re­al­is­tic way. Not on pipe dreams." The JCC weighs in... Mean­while, Afra Ray­mond, pres­i­dent of the JCC de­scribed the present cli­mate for the de­sign and build­ing in­dus­try in T&T, as "very wor­ry­ing."

"Ar­chi­tects and en­gi­neers have no lev­els of work, which means the rest of us in the in­dus­try are look­ing at a se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion go­ing for­ward. Based on some of the meet­ings we've been hav­ing with of­fi­cials in the Gov­ern­ment we have to buck­le down for an en­gage­ment," said Ray­mond. He added: "The rea­son we men­tion Gov­ern­ment is be­cause most of our pro­fes­sion­al prac­tices re­ly on Gov­ern­ment as the largest or­gan of the econ­o­my. And if the Gov­ern­ment takes a par­tic­u­lar di­rec­tion as we saw in the last regime it could have a very bad ef­fect on our pro­fes­sions. We are right now en­gag­ing with all of our voice and our en­er­gy to try to make sure that this new Gov­ern­ment takes a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion. And it's not easy. It is a se­ri­ous job."