Contract work banks up

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34147, 7 May 1976, Page 14

Contract work banks up

The Christchurch Drainage Board should not be cultivating a policy of accepting several tenders from the one contractor; it" held up completion dates of contracts, Mr J. Ryan said at a meeting of the works committee of the board yesterday. Mr Ryan said that contractors should give completion dates and the board should see they were kept. * > “The way it is the works committee may as well not set a completion date.” One small contractor had three contracts with the board, of $50,000 or $60,000 each. Work would bank up because he could not cope with such a volume of work.

It appeared that the board felt obliged to accept the lowest tender for contracts when many times the second or third lowest tender was well below board estimates.

Mr Ryan said that he did propose a new policy, but board members should not “flip over” contracts quite so quickly when they were at board meetings.

“We do it too easily. We should accept these tenders a little more slowly at board level,” he said.