16 Apr 2023

Government, through the Ministry of Transport and Public Works will soon introduce a development manager model to ensure timely delivery of major projects.

In a statement delivered in Parliament recently, Minister of Transport and Public Works, Mr Eric Molale said the development manager model would ensure that projects were completed within stipulated time to prevent unnecessary additional costs to government.

“The adoption of such a model was informed by the fact that Botswana has continued to experience projects implementation challenges which have led to loss of public funds, slow economic growth and facilitated corruption despite good policies and measures being in place,” Mr Molale said.

He said implementation challenges faced included poor contract administration, poor supervision as well as delays in decision making.

“These challenges have a negative impact on the economy and quality of life to the citizenry, such as poor service delivery in critical sectors like health and education, lack of economic growth and corruption opportunities due to economic imbalances,” he said.

He added that the policies and strategies in place were also hampered by lack of skills and competence in project implementation, which he said had resulted in poor quality projects, cost overruns and protracted litigations.

He also lamented poor maintenance of existing facilities, which he said resulted in their premature dilapidation.

“It is in that light that the ministry resolved therefore to adopt the concept to try and improve project delivery. In this concept, the development manager does the full scope of engineering, procurement, construction and management services associated with facilities and infrastructure projects from start to finish,” he said.

He added that above the concept being efficient, would also help cushion government from design, construction and financial risks often associated with lapses in project implementation and delivery, including delays and cost overruns commonly associated with litigation and insider trading.

Again, he said the development manager model also allowed for private sector financing, and apart from speeding up project implementation, the concept would also ensure fair distribution of works to contractors as no single contractor would be awarded more than two projects.

“Through this concept, we are also sure to derive capacity building and skills transfer to both citizen-owned companies and government employees. This will therefore strengthen government’s future ability to manage projects on its own, resulting in more projects mobilised at once thereby creating more jobs,” he explained.

Further, the minister allayed fears that the use of development manager concept might lead to job losses, saying ‘to keep the development manager in check, government would establish a Catalyst Project Team (CPT) to facilitate and oversee works undertaken by the former from inception to completion. The CPT is key in timely delivery of projects since it speeds up all the delaying processes like unavailability of land and issuance of permits and required licenses.”

Mr Molale also explained that adoption of the development manager model was in a way, government’s effort in carrying out its obligations the citizenry.

He informed legislators that the ministry had hit the ground running as it had already floated an Expression of Interest to acquire services of development manager, which was closed in February this year.

“Some local, regional and international companies have already expressed interest to participate and prequalified bidders will shortly be engaged to provide the required development manager services for some identified government projects,” he said.

He added that the process to recruit members of the CPT was currently at an advanced stage. ENDS