'Shape up if you want us to tender for work'

THE States must regain the confidence of the construction industry if it wants contractors to tender for future projects. The Guernsey Building Trades Employers' Association noted that the Wales Audit Office highlighted 'major weaknesses and shortcomings in States systems and processes'.

The WAO report said that politicians' behaviour over the withdrawal of the cheaper tender for the PEH clinical block in August 2006 risked perpetuating Guernsey's reputation as not being a desirable client.

'The States must take heed of the recommendations and endeavour to become a best-practice client for the construction industry. This is in order to deliver best value for the taxpayer and to restore the reputation of the States as a construction client,' said GBTEA president David Duquemin yesterday.

The WAO report found that States processes and procedures for developing and managing capital contracts were not always followed.

'The procedures and processes were inadequate, incomplete and unclear,' it said.

Mr Duquemin said: 'Contractors incur huge costs when tendering for multi-million-pound projects and confidence must be rebuilt with the industry to ensure that contractors are willing to submit competitive tenders in the future.'

The GBTEA believes that it is essential that the prioritisation and procurement of projects are carried out by States Property Services, so that the peaks and troughs of the industry's workstream are effectively smoothed out.

While States procurement methods are still being handled by individual departments, there are likely to be further problems with procurement in the future, the report suggests.

'The involvement of the industry and the States in the Construction Forum and the Construction Sector Group has been a great benefit to all parties. The States has made changes in recent years to address some of its procurement procedures and further lessons must now be learned from this issue to benefit both the industry and the taxpayer,' said Mr Duquemin.

The WAO report will be high on the agenda at a Guernsey Construction Forum meeting on Wednesday.

'Members of the forum have been waiting for the outcome of the report to see what the implications are for the construction industry in Guernsey.

'For several years we were concerned at the number of non-island companies obtaining work for the States and were pleased to see a change in attitude when the new States Property Services were set up and that more work was coming to local companies,' said forum chairman Eric Legg.

'The so-called Fallagate affair suggested there could be implications for the industry but we were not prepared to comment until the outcome of the Wales Audit Office report was known and discussed among the membership.'