Local Contractors Lift Their Game

The government is developing a draft national building code to standardise buildings and civil works to enhance quality.

The Deputy Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, Dr Mustapha Ahmed, who disclosed this at the maiden Excellence

Awards of the Association of Building and Civil Engineering Contractors of Ghana (ABCECG) in Accra, also added that the government would use incentives and policies to increase the use of local materials in the construction industry from 20 per cent to 60 per cent.

“We encourage contractors to patronise local materials in their works. The construction sector is growing and we want to support the players, especially those who utilise local materials, Dr Ahmed said at the first National Building and Civil Contractors Awards night held at the Banquet Hall of the State House.

The awards, which recognises mainly Ghanaian companies that have proven themselves, seeks to remake the image of the local civil construction industry which has been touted as being inefficient, without capacity and deliver shoddy works.

Messrs Jescan Construction Limited, a local company, picked up the ultimate prize of Building Contractor of the Year award, after picking the Outstanding Quality and Workmanship, as well as the Outstanding Health Safety and Environmental Management-2011 awards. The company took home a KIA truck, worth $25,000 donated by BBC Leyland Paint for being winners of the Contractor of the Year 2011.

The deputy minister commended the ABCECG for the quality criteria they had set for the awards and urged them to use the same model to develop training courses to build the capacity of members.

Dr Ahmed said the construction sector was worth supporting considering that sub-sector of the economy recorded growth rate of 17 per cent against a target of 13.5 per cent and became the second largest contributor to goods and services produced within the country. The sector contributed a total of GH¢3.7 billion to the total production of goods and services within the economy.

The President of the association, Mr Edward Kwao Amanor, said the award scheme was important to raise the bar in the local construction industry, since “both building and civil engineering contractors have suffered for far too long.”

Mr Amanor said while players in the industry agreed that there were lapses on their part, it would go without saying that it was an industry that struggled to raise finance, faced with high interest rates, low capacity and had to contend with obsolete equipment.

The president of ABCECG, therefore, appealed to other sister associations to partner them in hosting future awards, adding “this marks the beginning of that new thinking; ‘we can do it’.”

The chairman of the technical committee that developed the criteria and parameters to be awarded, Mr Rockson Kwesi Dogbegah, stressed that the promotion of excellence in the building construction industry was non-negotiable, as their work had a direct impact on the infrastructure of the economy.

“I therefore challenge my fellow contractors to make the pursuit of excellence an integral part of their life. It must be the mantra not only in words but in deeds”, Mr Dogbegah said, announcing that deciding the winners of the six-category award was thorough and scientific.

Mr Dogbegah also called on the government to start the process of giving preferential treatment to winners of the awards in awarding contracts, saying “if the government did that they would be encouraging the pursuit of excellence and Ghana will be a better place.”

A civil engineer and consultant, Togbi Kporku, who chaired the function, also urged the contractors to forge ahead to erase negative perceptions about them and demonstrate to the nation that there was no shortage of good intentions, credibility, capacity and skills among Ghanaian contractors.

Consar Ltd received the Outstanding Time and Site Management award; Proko Ghana ltdasm was adjudged the Outstanding Social Corporate Responsibility; Kumfranky Company Ltd, took home the Outstanding Time and Site Management for the D2K2

companies category, while Malkna Enterprise Ltd was adjudged the Outstanding Time and Site Management for D3K3 class of companies.