An­drea Perez-Sobers
Se­nior Re­porter
an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try (JCC) pres­i­dent Fazir Khan has cau­tioned against fram­ing the con­struc­tion sec­tor’s cur­rent slow­down as a melt­down trig­gered by any sin­gle com­pa­ny, in­sist­ing the pres­sures now sur­fac­ing are the re­sult of long-stand­ing struc­tur­al prob­lems for which in­dus­try lead­ers should have an­tic­i­pat­ed and planned.

Khan’s re­sponse comes two days af­ter Ju­nior Sam­my Con­trac­tors Ltd said its staff has been placed on a ro­ta­tion sys­tem to keep em­ploy­ment sta­ble, with some staff work­ing “one day in, one day out” as the com­pa­ny has been af­fect­ed by an eco­nom­ic slow­down.

Khan, who is the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Al­pha En­gi­neer­ing & De­sign (2012) Ltd, high­light­ed that mul­ti­ple large firms have al­ready be­gun scal­ing back op­er­a­tions due to tight gov­ern­ment fi­nances and chron­ic de­lays in pay­ment.

The sit­u­a­tion, he added, is nei­ther new nor un­ex­pect­ed.

“Every change in gov­ern­ment trig­gers a slow­down in dis­burse­ments,” he ex­plained, not­ing that ver­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cis­es and bud­get shifts rou­tine­ly ex­tend pay­ment cy­cles. That re­al­i­ty, he said, has de­fined the con­struc­tion busi­ness in T&T for decades.

Khan said it is well known that con­trac­tors of­ten wait months be­tween com­plet­ing work, sub­mit­ting in­voic­es, re­solv­ing dis­putes, and fi­nal­ly re­ceiv­ing funds. This lag, he em­pha­sised, is sim­ply the na­ture of large pub­lic sec­tor con­tracts. What is dif­fer­ent to­day is the de­gree of fi­nan­cial strain fac­ing the State, with the gov­ern­ment strug­gling to fi­nance on­go­ing com­mit­ments while man­ag­ing ris­ing ex­pen­di­ture.

Against this back­drop, he be­lieves com­pa­nies should have al­ready moved to pro­tect them­selves. He re­ject­ed the nar­ra­tive that the in­dus­try is on the brink of col­lapse and in­stead ar­gued that man­age­ment must take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for for­ward plan­ning, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and in­no­va­tion.

For years, he not­ed, Trinida­di­an en­gi­neer­ing firms, con­sul­tants, ar­chi­tects and con­trac­tors have ex­pand­ed across the Caribbean to counter do­mes­tic slow­downs. That out­ward push has kept lo­cal pro­fes­sion­als em­ployed, brought in for­eign ex­change and po­si­tioned T&T com­pa­nies as com­pet­i­tive play­ers in mul­ti­lat­er­al­ly fund­ed re­gion­al projects.

Khan said that that trend must now ac­cel­er­ate. Trinida­di­an firms, he ar­gued, have a strong edge when bid­ding for Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank and World Bank projects, es­pe­cial­ly in small­er is­lands where en­gi­neer­ing and tech­ni­cal ca­pac­i­ty re­main lim­it­ed.

“We com­pete against our own more than any­one else,” he said, adding that lo­cal firms of­ten beat in­ter­na­tion­al com­peti­tors on both price and qual­i­ty.

He iden­ti­fied sev­er­al mar­kets, Grena­da, Guyana, St Vin­cent and St Lu­cia, where con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty is ex­pand­ing, sup­port­ed by cli­mate fi­nanc­ing and in­fra­struc­ture grants. Com­pa­nies that track these fund­ing flows, in­vest in bid prepa­ra­tion and strength­en their pres­ence in these ter­ri­to­ries are far more like­ly to weath­er the do­mes­tic slow­down, he said.
Khan al­so point­ed to emerg­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties in cli­mate-smart agri­cul­ture, ir­ri­ga­tion, wa­ter stor­age, and food se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture, ar­eas that Cari­com has pri­ori­tised and that are sup­port­ed by mul­ti­lat­er­al agen­cies. As a civ­il en­gi­neer work­ing re­gion­al­ly, he said these sec­tors are rich with de­sign and con­struc­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties for firms will­ing to broad­en their scope be­yond tra­di­tion­al build­ing works.

Lo­cal­ly, he ar­gued that pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships (PPPs) of­fer an­oth­er path for ex­pe­ri­enced con­trac­tors with fi­nan­cial ca­pac­i­ty. With the Gov­ern­ment in­creas­ing­ly look­ing to of­fload up­front fis­cal bur­dens, PPPs en­able firms to bring cap­i­tal and tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise to na­tion­al projects. He not­ed that many re­cent ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est re­quire the pri­vate sec­tor to fi­nance or par­tial­ly fi­nance pro­posed works, an area where long stand­ing com­pa­nies may have a com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage.

It is for this rea­son, he said, that the re­cent claim in­volv­ing Ju­nior Sam­my Con­trac­tors Ltd must be un­der­stood with­in the broad­er na­tion­al con­text. The com­pa­ny has cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­nied that any per­ma­nent em­ploy­ees were sent home, ter­mi­nat­ed or in­struct­ed to re­main off the job with­out pay. In­stead, the firm said no such di­rec­tive was is­sued, and no fur­lough no­tices were served. In­dus­try sources al­so in­di­cat­ed that the com­pa­ny, one of the largest in the coun­try, is ex­plor­ing ro­ta­tion­al sched­ul­ing rather than re­trench­ment.

Khan be­lieves such adap­tive ap­proach­es demon­strate that lay­offs are not the on­ly op­tion. He ex­pressed con­cern that some firms have al­ready be­gun send­ing home work­ers or tem­porar­i­ly clos­ing sec­tions of their busi­ness. While he ac­knowl­edged re­ports about oth­er com­pa­nies cut­ting staff, he in­sist­ed that man­age­ment must take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for strate­gic re­spons­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the signs of an ex­tend­ed slow­down have been vis­i­ble for years.