Construction Contracts Bill

There has been a lot of talk emanating from the CIF, the Irish Concrete Federation and also some TD's and Senators in relation to the new construction contracts bill. This talk is along the lines that if this bill was currently in place then some recent problems on sites would not occur.

Random statements are coming into the public domain without any real substance or backup to justify why this pending piece of legislation would somehow magically save sub-contractors.

The latest on this is to do with the Brian McCarthy Ltd Pepsi site in Cork where sub-contractors are owed money and are threatening to blockade the site.

Any new legislation that will improve matters is certainly helpful but for people to be effectively saying that the new Bill will stop main contractors going bust and stop any non-payments going down the supply chain is simply untrue.

It would be best if the CIF and other's would advise sub-contractors to simply arrange a contractual link to the client on such projects by way of a collateral agreement. This is the simple solution rather than moaning and groaning about a Bill that may not even work or function correctly. For example, if conciliator here were a plastering subbie for a project for Pespi then the wise thing to do would be to ensure that if the Main Contractor goes belly up I can run to Pepsi to get money due, it is not that difficult to get this agreement in place at the outset.


Links to recent developments as follows;

Irish Examiner

Irish Construction

CIF News Pepsi

CIF News Kilfinane

p.s. Rather than been guilty of random statements myself  I will do another blog separately on the Construction Bill in the near future outlining it's potential flaws. Link below to something I blogged on the topic a few years back.....

Conciliators previous discussion on the Bill

Irish Government Needs to Stimulate Economy Urgently

A stimulus package is urgently required for the survival of the Civil Engineering sector in Ireland. Many of the last large scale projects around the country are soon about to reach completion with some of Ireland's best and brightest Engineers and workers with no future work to look forward to.

The Government are now on their seasonal break and with the annual CIF (construction industry federation) holidays pending there doesn't appear to be a hole to be dug or a sod to be turned anymore in this Country.

It is clear that this current Governments 'ambition' all along was to be the party to construct the motorways in Ireland, once that is achieved that will be the end of the infrastructure / road building program for the foreseeable future and perhaps the end of many small and medium sized civil contracting operators. The Government partners are no great help to any further road building and some of them are difficult to understand, they would have us driving around on hair dryers given half a chance!

Are the current Ministers for Environment, Finance, Enterprise, and the Taoiseach not aware of the boost a local bypass construction project can give to the local economy? The machine drivers, drainage crews, chippies, steel fixers, engineers, gangers, foremen etc rent local houses from local landlords, they drink and eat in local pubs and one would guess that statistically out of any workforce they are willing to part with a few bob during the week.

The following NRA projects are probably ready to go to tender but are sitting in some office gathering dust:

N3 Belturbet Bypass
N4 Colloney / Castlebaldwin (Sligo has the largest increase in unemployment since the recession kicked in)
N4 Mullingar - Longford
N5 Ballaghaderreen Bypass
N5 Longford Bypass (bring back Albert Reynolds all is forgiven!)
N5 Westport - Bohola
N6 Galway City Outer Bypass
M11 Gorey - Enniscorthy
N11 Arklow - Rathnew
N11 Enniscorthy Bypass
N11/N25 Oilgate - Rosslare Harbour
N21 Adare Bypass
N22 Tralee Bypass
N24 Carrick-on-Suir Bypass
N24 Mooncoin Bypass

The total calculation for these roads is approx 300km. Based on this Q.S's experience its give or take a € billion in construction costs. I say give or take as this government has already propped up one of our banks recently to the tune of €4billion or 1,200 kilometers worth in road construction costs parlance - http://www.rte.ie/business/2009/0529/anglo.html

The CIF states that every €100 million spent in construction creates 1,000 jobs, so based on the above calculation that's 40,000 jobs saved plus the resultant job creation knock-on effects in towns like Sligo, Carrick-on-Suir, Ballaghaderreen, Adare etc etc... when you weigh up the banks value bailout in job creation terms it equates to a scary figure of 120,000. One could connive to state that the banks bailout has in a sort of a way lobbed 120,00 persons on the dole(?).

The most disappointing aspect in all of this for me as a young professional in the industry is that we have created a highly skilled and highly educated and innovative workforce over the last decade and this workforce will now in the main have to be sent out of the country to pastures new; this to me is the biggest waste.

Why are we letting this happen to our Nation?