LIMITACIONES DE LOS ESTUDIOS Y LÍNEAS DE DESARROLLO

The Institute for Construction Training and Development (ICTAD) (www.ictad.lk, 2015) and the National Construction Association of Sri Lanka (NCASL - www.ncasl.lk) are the two premier organisations relating to the construction industry in Sri Lanka. The researcher identified that the aforementioned two organisations have valuable information that can be utilised as a reliable set of data relating to construction organisations, their strengths, capabilities and resources. In order to avoid repetitive work, the development of the research questionnaire through to the entire data collection process, and the “Proposed Framework” depicted in Figure 5.1 of this research thesis, were pre-tailored to fit in with the infrastructure of ICTAD and NCASL (since it is said that adjusting an existing system is much easier than introducing a brand new mechanism). An outline introduction to, and the responsibilities of, ICTAD and NCASL are given below:

 ICTAD

‘The Institute for Construction Training and Development (ICTAD) is an organisation set up by the Government of Sri Lanka to develop and promote the domestic Construction Industry, Contractors, Professionals, Work Force, etc. ICTAD has established itself as a recognized and important constituent of the Construction Industry. The Vision of the ICTAD is to create a reliable and globally competitive construction industry for Sri Lanka and its missions are expanded to ensure dynamic, professional, and reliable value added services to the nation, through regulation and facilitation of the development of construction industry resources and promotion of quality standards, to meet local and global requirements for sustainable national development’

(www.ictad.lk, 2015).  NCASL

The ‘National Construction Association of Sri Lanka (NCASL) is the apex body in the country for the development of the construction industry. It was originally formed as the Association of Construction of Sri Lanka in 1981, with the initiation of the government of Sri Lanka and the support of the World Bank. With an initial membership of forty contractors, the association has steadily grown, and now has over two thousand five hundred regular members under its umbrella scattered throughout the island’ (www.ncasl.lk, 2014).

ICTAD is a statutory organisation managed through a Cabinet appointed Chairman supported by a board of directors selected from industry professionals. NCASL is a company set up by the registered construction contractors in Sri Lanka. The Chair and the Board of Directors of NCASL are selected by the registered construction contractors in Sri Lanka. The websites of ICTAD and NCASL are highly informative and are openly accessible to the public. The contractor categorisation provided in Tables 3.2 and 3.3 were extracted from the ICTAD website (Appendix C). Furthermore, the contact postal addresses (Appendix B) of registered construction contractors that were utilised for the distribution of the questionnaire were prepared from the data available on the websites of ICTAD. NCASL collaborated with this research during the data collection stage by providing individual supportive letters addressed to a selected 400 construction contractors in Sri Lanka (Appendix D).

3.7.3.1 Supporting structure for the data collection and the Framework

Currently ICTAD (the Institute for Construction Training and Development) has a contractor grading system. The grade varies from C1 to C10 depending on the capacity of individual contractors (see Table 3.2 in this thesis). All grades of category C contractors generally taking the main contractor role in the traditional type of construction procurement. In addition to category ‘C’ contractors there are also grading systems for specialist contractors, as shown in Table 3.3 of thesis. When evaluating a contractor’s grade, their capacities and resources are valued.

Table 3.2 : Main Contractor Grading Classification

(Souece: www.ictad.lk, 2015)

ICTAD - Main Contractor Grading Classification

Speciality Areas Grade Financial Limit

(SLRs. Millions)

Building Construction Highways

Bridges

Water Supply & Drainage Irrigation & Land Drainage Dredging & Reclamation Storm Water Drainage Groynes & Revetments & Reclamation C1 X ≥ 600 C2 600 ≥ X > 300 C3 300 ≥ X > 150 C4 150 ≥ X > 50 C5 50 ≥ X > 25 C6 25 ≥ X > 10 C7 10 ≥ X > 05 C8 05 ≥ X > 02 C9 02 ≥ X C10 01 ≥ X

Financial Limits (Effective from 1st June 2012)

When looking from the viewpoint of providing a suitable PR/SS structure, one of the major weaknesses in the classification structure of the ICTAD contractor grading system is the imbalanced weightages given for the availability of in house construction operatives. Since the availability of in house human resources do not give any considerable impact for the prospective contractors in terms of achieving the desired ICTAD grade (either C1 or C10 in the current scenario), the contracting organisations do not have any valid necessity to spend funds on maintaining a permanent workforce. However, many contracting organisations permanently maintain engineers and trained technicians at a supervisory level.

Table 3.3 : Specialist Contractor Grading Classification

(Source: www.ictad.lk, 2015) Specialist Contractor :

Speciality Sub Speciality Grade Financial Limit

(SLRs. Million) E le ct ri ca l & M e ch a n ica l S e rvi ce s (EM )

Mechanical Ventilation and Air Conditioning (MVAC)

EM 1 X ≥ 50

Refrigeration (RF

Electrical Installations (Low Tension) (EE-LT)

Plumbing & Drainage (PD) Elevators, Escalators & Travellators (EET) Generators (Gen)

Electrical Installation (High Tension) (EE-HT)

Extra Low Voltage Installations (Data, Telecommunication and Security Systems) (ELV)

EM 2 50 ≥ X > 25 Fire Detection, Protection &

Suppression (FDPS) EM 3 25 ≥ X > 10

Medical Gas Systems (MG) EM 4 10 ≥ X > 02

LP Gas Systems (LPG) EM 5 02 ≥ X S pec ial is e d C ons tr uc ti on C o nt rac tor s (SP -C )

Aluminum & Finishes (A&F)

SP1 X ≥ 50

Floor, Wall & Ceiling Finishes (FW&C) (must specify the finish) Carpentry & Joinery (Carp) Light Metal Work (ME) Soft Landscaping (LA)

Furniture, Fittings & Equipment

(FF&E) SP2 50 ≥ X > 25

Water Proofing (WP) SP3 25 ≥ X > 10

Swimming Pools (SP) - Industrial

Domestic SP4 10 ≥ X > 02

Soil Nailing & Stabilisation (SN) SP5 02 ≥ X

P ilin g GP-P X ≥ 50 GP-B1 X ≥ 150 GP-B2 150 ≥ X > 50 GP-B3 50 ≥ X > 10 GP-B4 10 ≥ X

Through this framework, it is suggested to set up human resources, providing organisations can take the burden of a single point responsibility for the physical production and desired quality of a project. In this system, there will be no risk transfer from one what to another person or a company. The researcher’s aim is to calculate the impact of current risk multiplication and to search for the possibilities of implementing the proposed system without increasing (self sustainable) the prevailing construction costs.