[sustran] Why Flyovers Will Fall

[Vinay Baindur]

http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/19/perspectives/why-flyovers-will-fall.html



Why Flyovers Will Fall
Decline of the Civil Engineering Profession in India

Shirish B Patel <http://www.epw.in/author/shirish-b-patel>

shirish at spacpl.com <shirish at spacpl.com>) is a civil engineer and urban
planner who was in charge of planning, design and execution in Navi Mumbai
during its first five years.

The coal secretary recently blamed the "5Cs"-- Central Vigilance
Commission, Central Information Commission, Central Bureau of
Investigation, Comptroller and Auditor General and the courts--for
inhibiting quick and effective decision-making and impeding the country's
development. The steady and continuing decline of the civil engineering
profession in India has its roots in policies mandated by the Comptroller
and Auditor General in regard to the procurement of consultancy services.

The collapse of a flyover under construction in Kolkata on 31 March killed
26 people and injured 90. The flooding in Chennai in early December 2015
killed 280 and what was inexplicable was how long it took for the floods to
recede. These disasters, and many more in recent years, illustrate their
common root: the decline of the civil engineering profession in India, and
the evolution of government procurement policies in regard to professional
services that initiated and now increasingly accelerate this decline. These
policies encourage the appointment of civil engineering professionals who
quote the lowest fee, not those who can deliver the best outcomes.1 Contrast
this with the way one would select a doctor or a lawyer or a chartered
accountant.

*What Is Civil Engineering?*

Seventy years ago, at the time of independence, the top choice of young
students entering engineering colleges was civil engineering; followed by
mechanical, then electrical and finally metallurgical engineering. Today it
is computer science, electronics, electrical engineering, followed by
mechanical or metallurgical, with the last, least desired option being
civil engineering. There is practically no student now for whom civil
engineering is the first choice on entering an engineering college. No
wonder that for nearly all graduates today civil engineering is a rite of
passage into the job market, not a profession that inspires commitment or
passion.

Before asking what has occasioned this amazing decline it might be
worthwhile to spell out what civil engineering is all about. Earlier it was
often concerned with “…directing the great forces of nature for the benefit
of mankind,” which led to a preoccupation with dams, hydroelectric
projects, irrigation canals and massive water supply schemes. But at all
times, its central concern has been the totality of the built environment,
including roads, railways, bridges, harbours and every conceivable kind of
building, from a simple house to a skyscraper or a stadium. Respect for the
natural environment was always an important concern, as can be seen from
the design of so many bridges that are aesthetically pleasing and blend
well into their surroundings.

An equally important goal in civil engineering is economy. It used to be
said that a civil engineer can do for one rupee what any fool can do for
two. Economy in project cost and economy in the use of raw materials are
both fundamental objectives for a civil engineer.

*Respect for the Environment*

Civil engineering has many specialisations within it, like roads and
railways, docks and harbours, bridges, tunnels, water supply, sewerage,
drainage, structural engineering for buildings, among others. The most
recent entrant to this diverse group is environmental engineering—a branch
of civil engineering that deals with minimising any damage that may be
caused to the natural environment by a particular construction project.

The best demonstration of this integration of environmental concerns with a
major construction project is perhaps Hong Kong’s new Chek Lap Kok airport.
Two small hilly islands, 25 km distant from the city’s downtown, were
flattened and the rubble from cutting them was used to fill the space
between. Connecting to the mainland for both high-speed rail and road
traffic required two bridges and two tunnels and a six-lane expressway. In
the context of all this massive work, extending over seven years, the Hong
Kong government took several mitigation measures to keep the loss of
wildlife and habitats at a minimum. Ecological studies of the local
wetlands, seagrass beds, and mangrove communities were undertaken,
resulting in the replanting of mangroves and woodlands and the relocation
of a colony of Romer’s Tree Frogs (Howlett 1996).

The British Airports Authority provided airports expertise, but the entire
design and engineering was entrusted to three private consulting firms.2 After
70 years of independence, there is no Indian design firm that could provide
even a tiny fraction of the capability required for such a project. We need
to ask ourselves why.

*In-house vs Consultancy Skills*

At independence, consulting firms in the field of civil engineering were
few and tiny. There were some architectural practices, and small firms of
structural engineers, with a handful of larger firms, rarely exceeding 100
personnel in size, providing services mainly to steel plants and big
industry. The engineering knowhow was scattered among officers in
government, who practised their skills almost entirely on their own turf,
almost never being invited to apply these skills elsewhere in the country.

Typical among these was N V Modak, who was city engineer for the
Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), and in that capacity oversaw the
construction of Vaitarna Dam (the lake is also called Modaksagar Lake) and
the strengthening of Tansa Dam, both critical to the water supply of
Mumbai. He also had expertise in sewage handling and garbage disposal, and
reclamation of low-lying land. He published a book on town and country
planning, co-authored with V N Ambedkar, and together with Albert Mayer
published *An Outline of a Master Plan for Greater Bombay*. But his skills,
however remarkable, remained confined to the area under the jurisdiction of
his employer, the BMC. He, and the support team he must have inevitably
built up, could serve no wider clientele.

Similarly, the Bombay Port Trust (BPT) engineers developed considerable
expertise in the design and supervision of a variety of marine structures,
from jetties to quay walls to dry docks and their gates. But that team and
their skills were again confined to the area under the jurisdiction of
their employer, the BPT. If BPT had decided to have an independent
consultancy arm, it could have advised ports around the country. Certainly
its officers had the necessary experience at that time, and could have
trained their younger colleagues. Ideally, given the experience their
design and supervision staff had, and given that the BPT had not much
further immediate work in mind, it would have been ideal if the design and
supervision staff had been hived off into an independently-managed
consultancy firm. The merit of an external consultancy service over
in-house skills is that the expertise acquired by the consultant can be
extended to other projects elsewhere in the country or abroad, and this
builds up their expertise further. Next time you want something done
in-house, you have access to all the skills you had earlier, now further
enhanced.

Good consulting firms are always those that protect their client’s
interests, and keep this at the forefront of their minds. They act as if
they were on the employees’ payroll of the client. In effect they are the
client’s temporary, specialised professional arm in their particular area
of expertise. They act on behalf of the client to protect his interests
above all else—it is only on that basis that they can earn a reputation and
attract not only new clients but also repeat clients, the older ones, who
will come back to them again and again. Ideally—although this is not always
found in practice—the consultant should put his client’s interests above
his own, offering a better solution even if it means more work for himself.

There is one caveat to the primacy of the client in the mind of the
consulting civil engineer. And this is that the ultimate client, the one
that stands even above the one that is paying his fees, is the public. The
interest of the public is paramount, and overrides everything else. So, for
example, if a major new dry dock is to be built in South Mumbai, which is
not a particularly sensible location from the point of view of inviting
enemy attack to a concentration of both people and installations, nor is it
economical compared to other locations in the country on account of the
extensive reclamation required, then it behoves the responsible civil
engineer to protest that such a project is against the national interest,
instead of participating in the invitation to bid for the assignment.

Civil engineering consultancy fees are usually a tiny fraction of total
project cost. The difference between a good consultant and an indifferent
one will invariably reflect in life cycle costs for the project. This
includes not just initial costs, which should anyway be close to the lowest
possible, but also the repeat costs (and client headaches) on account of
subsequent maintenance and repairs. The resulting savings in the project
can sometimes far exceed the totality of the consultancy fee. If the
consultant is well above average, the client will be rewarded not only with
an economical and trouble-free project that functions well, but also one
that is aesthetically pleasing.

*Procurement Procedures*

When selecting a lawyer or a doctor, no client asks for competitive
bidding, and then awards the work to the lowest bidder because a low fee is
invariably, and correctly, associated with inferior service. When a
client’s personal interests are at stake, he will always look for the best
lawyer or doctor he can find within the fee that he is prepared to pay.

Contrast this with the way in which government organisations, and some
private ones too, select their civil engineering consultants.

There is a faint nod in the direction of the notion that quality matters in
professional services. The government agency responsible for a project can
make a short list of approved consultants. And even among these there can
be a ranking according to competence. This leads to the 80:20 formula,
where 80 marks are assigned for technical competence, and only 20 to the
financial bid. This looks eminently reasonable, and gives the impression
that a high weightage is being given to quality. But in practice, the 80
marks are divided into so many for financial strength, so many for number
of staff, so many for previous experience of such projects (regardless of
whether you did a good or a bad job), and so many for the technical quality
of the proposal. Anyone with less than 70 marks is ruled out. So the client
is left with a short list of consultants who have technical marks within a
very narrow range, generally between 70 and 80 marks, put together on merit
plus a number of peripheral considerations.

Now we come to the financial bid. All bids are opened and the lowest bidder
is given a mark of 20. Everyone else gets a mark depending on the ratio of
his bid to that of the lowest bidder, multiplied by 20. Thus if someone
quotes twice as much as the lowest bidder he will get 10 marks and someone
who quotes higher will get even less. So if any competent professional puts
in a bid with a perfectly reasonable fee, anyone else who has made it to
the short list has only to quote half that amount and be assured of a
10-point advantage in the computation of marks. The underbidder will almost
certainly get the job. To make ends meet he must then either (i) extract
money from contractors because it is in his hands to certify their payment
(and remember that implicit in this is some softening of quality control),
or (ii) underpay his staff, or (iii) depend on novices, or (iv) cut corners
in developing the design, the consequences of which will be, at the very
least, to push up project costs, if not actually endanger the design.
Whichever it is, the client gets an inferior design, and probably almost
certainly spends much more on the project than he has saved on consulting
fees through this process of selection.

Mixing financial bids with evaluation of merit is a sure way of ensuring
that the best consultant will not be selected. The World Bank earlier had
an excellent system of consultant selection. All those invited to bid were
asked to submit their technical proposal and their financial bid in
separate sealed envelopes. First, only all the technical proposals were
opened. Selection was on merit alone, all aspects considered, usually by a
committee. Then the financial bid of only the selected best consultant was
opened. If negotiations with him concluded satisfactorily, then all the
remaining financial bids were returned unopened. If negotiations failed,
then the bid of the top ranked consultant was put aside, and the financial
bid of the second-best was opened, with the clear understanding that the
client could never go back to the first bidder. This ensured that the
client would be reasonable in his negotiations. It was a simple way of
ensuring that work was awarded to the best, or close to best consultant,
evaluated on purely technical grounds, undiluted by monetary savings.

Another simple way of selecting the best consultant would be for the client
to fix the fee he wants to pay. Selection would then be from among the
consultants who are prepared to work for this fee. Thereafter the selection
process proceeds to select the best qualified entrant. It may be that some
desirable consultants are not prepared to work for the fee on offer. In
that case the client needs to up his fee to the point at which such
superior consultants are prepared to work on the project. At any rate, such
a process ensures that work is assigned on merit, among those competing. As
a consequence, firms will then strive to increase their own merit, over
time, rather than focusing on how to cut their fees.

In any case, savings in consultancy fees are often trivial in the context
of the total project. Savings resulting from more efficient design,
particularly at the conceptual stage, can far outweigh the total
consultancy fee. One personal experience of a project in Bengaluru was the
addition of a latecomer to the shortlist, on instructions from Delhi. This
latecomer quoted a fee 1% below that of the best consultant. The chief
engineer privately said he knew that by awarding work to the lowest the
project cost would go up by 25%, but his hands were tied by audit, and he
said he had no option but to award the work to the lowest bidder. Project
costs did indeed go up, by more than the anticipated 25%, and the low
bidder eventually earned the same fee that would have been paid to the best
consultant. But the client ended up with a much costlier project overall.
So what indeed did the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG)’s procedures
achieve in this case? The answer is: a poorer quality project at
significantly higher total cost and all in the name of minimising
corruption.

The long-term consequence of this consultant selection process has been
that fees have steadily drifted downwards. Consultants themselves are much
to blame for this, by striving always to undercut each other. Their focus
is no longer on keeping up with the latest developments, or on improving
the quality of their work. The focus is on cutting costs. One result is
that civil engineers’ salaries have steadily fallen, until now they are
well below those of their peers in other professions. This discourages new
entrants, who are increasingly the dregs among those who enter engineering
college. Quality further declines.

*Design and Build Contracts*

As a result of bad experiences with consultants, clients are increasingly
inclined to award work to contractors on a “design and build” basis. That
is, the contractor is asked to take responsibility also for the design, and
is free to choose the consultant with whom he wants to work. The
consultant’s design is often “proof-checked,” which means that another
“proof consultant” is appointed by the client, for a trivial fee, to check
and approve the calculations of the main designer. This approval provides
no room for conceptual improvement in the design, or indeed protection
against uneconomical and over safe designs. It merely provides a check that
according to calculations the design is safe. There is no check that it is
indeed close to the most economical, thus defeating one of the key
objectives of good civil engineering.

But there is a much stronger reason for not awarding “design and build”
projects where the contractor has no financial interest in the project
after its completion. Flyovers are a typical example where the contractor
has simply to deliver the project, and that is the end of the
client–contractor relationship. In such cases it is always better to have a
consultant who does the design, and a contractor who executes the work.
This is because the objectives of consultant and contractor are different.
The consultant’s basic objective is to protect the interests of his client
(from whom he expects much future repeat work). The contractor’s is to make
a profit. The contractor will want to get away with minimum compliance with
specifications. The consultant will want high quality and minimal
subsequent maintenance problems. His overseeing of the contractor’s work is
a vital part of the project process. He provides the necessary checks to
ensure that the project is built with the quality that his design demands.

Indeed, contractors’ and consultants’ objectives are so different that some
consultants are known to produce one kind of design for a contractor who is
their client, and a different kind of design when the owner is their
client. For a contractor they will cut corners and produce a minimal design
that best uses the equipment the contractor already has. For an owner they
will produce a design that is optimal for the project, with a minimum of
maintenance headaches thereafter.

To get the best of both worlds, the client should appoint a consultant who
prepares a design on the basis of which tenders are invited from
contractors. But contractors should also be permitted to submit
alternatives with their own design. If this is found cheaper, the client’s
consultant much check and approve the design, and supervise construction,
as before. If the consultant sees his job as being that of protecting his
client’s best interests, these may well be served by accepting an efficient
alternative to his own design. It must be admitted however that not all
consultants are open-minded and self-confident enough to admit that in
particular circumstances there could be alternatives superior to their own
design.

The “design and build” alternative, when entered into directly by a client,
without a designer of his own, works only if the contractor has a financial
interest in the performance of the project after completion. This can
apply, for example, to airport design, where the contractor has the
concession to subsequently operate the airport for a specified period of
time. It can apply to highway design where a toll is to be collected, and
the contractor who built the highway is charged with its maintenance at his
own cost thereafter for the full concession period.

*Conclusions*

The flyover under construction in Kolkata was presumably allowed under a
design and build contract. There was no independent designer answerable to
the owner, to verify the construction, and whose reputation hung on a
trouble-free and successful outcome. Several officers of the contracting
company have been arrested and charged with murder and conspiracy to
murder. This is absurd, and cannot possibly be true, or proved in court.
The charge is pure showbiz, making a show of severity, while making no
attempt to discover or address the underlying cause. At the most the
contracting firm could be charged with negligence, but the real source of
trouble is the procurement process, which is guaranteed at its best to
deliver mediocre projects, and at its worst to deliver failures like this
one.

The flooding that happened in Chennai might be attributed to heavy rain and
the sudden opening of a dam’s floodgates. But what is inexplicable is the
time it took for the water to recede. This can only be because the city’s
drainage systems have been compromised, and that can only happen if those
in charge of systems do not have the ordinary competence that good civil
engineering demands. All one can blame is the decline of the profession,
the ultimate root cause of which is the framework for procurement as
determined, above all, by government’s audit arms. These are so bent on
preventing corruption (which they are manifestly unable to do) through
setting up procedures, that these very procedures, by ignoring quality and
even overall project costs, by insisting that each element be awarded to
the lowest bidder, are hurting the country’s infrastructure in ways these
audit officers are incapable of comprehending, because they have never seen
better.

Equally culpable perhaps are the government officers who award work. They
have a poor understanding of civil engineering matters anyway, because the
education system in that branch has declined in step with the profession.
Nor have they had the advantage, in their subsequent careers, of learning
from high quality professionals, because the system of procurement has
ensured they learn only from the poorest ones. But even if they know
something is inadvisable, they prefer the route that will invite no audit
objections. After all, their careers are unaffected by the quality or
success of the projects they deliver; they get no special promotions on
that account. What does threaten to hurt them though is the consequence of
not following stipulated procedure, for which they will almost certainly be
hauled up by audit. So their focus has to be on procedure, not outcome.
Flyovers may fall, and cities flood, but as long as the specified
procedures have been followed, no blame will attach to the officers in
charge, nor to the very procedures that brought this about.

*NOTES*

1 The coal secretary’s comment mentioned in the blurb was reported in *Times
of India,* Mumbai, front page item on 6 April 2016.

2 Mott Connell (the Hong Kong office of the United Kingdom consultancy Mott
MacDonald), Foster and Partners as architects and Ove Arup as specialist
structural designers for the roof.

*REFERENCES*

Howlett, Bob (ed) (1996): *Hong Kong Airport at Chek Lap Kok*, Hong Kong: H
Myers, Government Printer, http://www1.american.edu/TED/airport.htm.

ToI (2016): “‘5Cs’ Also Hinder Decision-making: Coal Secy,” *Time**s of
India*, Mumbai, front page, 6 April, See Note 1.
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