As Coromandel residents ask questions about when vital roading repairs might be completed, government spending on consultants amid a shortage of engineers intersects with the answer
There is plenty of engineering knowledge available to help the rebuild right now around the country, the government just needs to utilise it. WSP and other first tier engineering firms are owned by overseas corporates and for some reason ($) are the governments preferred firms. The second tier made up of large NZ owned firms and the smaller firms below have the same skills and knowledge but miss out on work as they can't put in low enough bid to compete with the off shore cheap labour these large firms use, or compete with the concentrated experience they have from being the only ones the government gets to do that work.
Part of building back better should be building back smarter and sharing out the work and raising the expertise of all engineering firms in NZ.
There is plenty of engineering knowledge available to help the rebuild right now around the country, the government just needs to utilise it. WSP and other first tier engineering firms are owned by overseas corporates and for some reason ($) are the governments preferred firms. The second tier made up of large NZ owned firms and the smaller firms below have the same skills and knowledge but miss out on work as they can't put in low enough bid to compete with the off shore cheap labour these large firms use, or compete with the concentrated experience they have from being the only ones the government gets to do that work.
Part of building back better should be building back smarter and sharing out the work and raising the expertise of all engineering firms in NZ.
Or it could entail setting up a Ministry of Green Works so the civil engineering expertise is taken back into the public service.