Collapsing infrastructure, lives in peril are the price of prioritising cost over quality
The government has encouraged a race to the bottom by preferring the lowest bidder in civil engineering projects.
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“In Bihar, fifth bridge collapses in a week”. “Canopy crash at airport kills one” in Delhi. These are headlines from late June. In Mumbai a few months before, we read of the collapse of an advertising hoarding, killing 17 people. When will such killings stop? We do not hear of them happening with such frequency in other countries.
The truth is that civil engineering has been on the decline since Independence. At that time, civil was the first choice of students entering engineering colleges, ahead of mechanical, electrical and metallurgical. Today it is the last choice. The reason is simple. Salaries for civil engineers are lower than those in the other engineering disciplines.
The reason for that is also simple. The government is the biggest client for civil engineering works, the building of infrastructure that is fundamental to development. Its procurement policies in regard to design of these projects have inspired private players to follow suit: choose the cheapest designer, not the one who delivers higher quality and better value for money in terms of total project costs. So designers in this country are competing with each other in terms of who can quote the lowest fee, not who can deliver the best quality.
Salaries are...
