Contractors Told To Improve Their Work

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30452, 28 May 1964, Page 4

Contractors Told To Improve Their Work

/New ZeclflTid Press Association)

WELLINGTON. May 27. Reading contractors who wanted a bigger share of major programmes must improve the quality of their work, keep to completion dates, and do their duty to the Government by providing more tenders for contracts, the Minister of Works (Mr Allen) said today. In what he described as “a good measure of criticism," he told the New Zealand General Contractors’ Federation what he thought, in opening the reading conference in Wellington. Assuring the contractors that they would get a greater share of the country’s dei velopment, he said quality must be a partner of quantity. However, a too rapid change-over to contracting of large total projects could attract overseas concerns. “But in my short time as Minister I have had the unfortunate experience of seeing only one tender submitted , for some decent-sized conj tracts,” Mr Allen said.

“The Government is entitled to better treatment than that and it expects better treatment It wants to see several bids for each contract.” After praising the neat tidy, and supervised work of some firms, he commented on the “scrappy, untidy site, loose or lack of supervision” apparent elsewhere. Mr Allen also criticised the tendency for contractors and ■ his own department to regard a specified completion date as “an optimistic target" i “An analysis of a sample of contracts from 1955 to 1962 showed that only 9 per cent were completed within the contract period,” he said. “Your performance will either retard or hasten the day when you are doing the bulk of New Zealand’s major ■ development” he said.

Norwegian shipowners expect record deliveries of new vessels totalling 1-900.000 gross tons in 1964. compared iwth 1.600.000 tons in 1963. I (Reuter).