Cost Cutting as a Cover for Fear-Based Abdication Of Responsibility

Some years ago, the local Council where was I living at the time upgraded the stormwater system in our street.

Now, that’s good for a whole range of reasons, but on in particular is that a fair it of work has shown that the best thing local government can do to prepare for the uncertainties of climate change is to ensure all infrastructure is being properly maintained, so it can operate as well as is possible.

That’s important for other reasons as well – for instance, if stormwater drainage isn’t operating properly, water can pool of the road, leading to accidents. (I think I read, in the media, of a court case as a result of a death or injury from exactly such an event: I don’t recall the outcome, but I do recall there was discussion on the balance between people driving cautiously [aka “personal responsibility”] vs. Council’s [i.e., our collective] responsibility, but it didn’t get into how external life factors [e.g., being force to work late and thus being tired, the demands of family duties, etc] can influence the ability to take personal responsibility.)

Overall, the project was managed reasonably well from a communications point of view (although the demands of surviving in the modern era meant some people didn’t read brochures about losing access the next day, and they weren’t home when the Contractor’s people tried to talk to them – which is a valid criticism of the communications strategy). I can’t say much about the technical side, as I didn’t have access to the technical specifications, but what I saw looked good.

Nevertheless, there were problems – such as one foreperson being so unbelievably foul mouthed that I considered calling the police and laying a complaint under Section 17 of the Summary Offences Act – and I’m used to foul language from my experience in the construction industry, from competitive sailing in the 1970s (a sport which has improved on that aspect subsequently), and others I’ve known (not many of the ex-military I’ve known, though).

I talked to Council about the problems, and they referred everything to the Contractor. At that time, I discovered that Council had no-one supervising the work being undertaken.

Council said the Contractor had been trained and pre-qualified for the work - as if lack of knowledge was the only reason for past problems. Sure, shortcomings in knowledge and procedures has been a problem, but thinking the training and pre-registration would fix all problems was utter BS – it ignores the biggest source of problems: greed and financial pressure to cut corners to make more profit.

Ultimately, if you don’t see a substantial amount of what is being done – or do random inspections – you cannot be confident that what was specified has been done.

It’s a bit like taking Saddam Hussein’s or North Korea’s word that they’ve got rid of all weapons of mass destruction.

The reality is, people are people: there are times and places to be trusting (e.g., in personal relationships), and there are times not to be – e.g., when spending public moneys.

That actually leads into the most frequent excuse for this abdication of responsibility: cost cutting (often dressed up in fancier phrases, but it’s basically cost cutting). In that case, complaints about rates are used as the pretext to deal with the most obvious, most simple costs – things like paying the inspectors and supervising engineers who used to be the QAQC of projects,

It’s often not actually saving costs so much as shifting them from Council to Contractors, but it enables superficial Councillors to say “hey we cut down Council costs by $X - and we ploughed that back into more work on infrastructure, which increased by $X”.

Yeah, right. That’s all a bit like the current “revelations” that power companies were increasing their prices so they could offer discounts (did some people really not think that was the case?!).

It’s very much a case of Council getting the wrong end of the stick in terms of responses to rising prices (there are better, more long term approaches – such as avoiding one company “panels”, and accepting that, despite its advantages, competition has its limits! [and can be downright damaging – to costs, and to organisational culture]), but the main reason, in my opinion, is using cost cutting as an excuse to abdicate responsibility.

I have come across many people in a wide range of situations, possibly hired because those who put the job description together didn’t know what was really necessary, who haven’t been comfortable with supervision – in fact, even some young engineers aren’t, which I blame on inadequate training at University (too much focus on theory and equations, and not enough on practicality).

The truth is, society would be better off from both a cost and a reliability/quality point of view if some of the practices that have been abandoned under the excuse of cost cutting were reintroduced – not all, as some of the supervision was excessive, but we, as a society, have thrown the baby out with the bathwater on this issue.

Also, we needed to provide better training and support of those – and I am thinking of people without tertiary qualifications - who had been doing the supervision. That creates a close-in to the councillors cost, but, in one takes the wider view (something neoliberals – and those with Newtonian worldviews - lack, in my opinion), a net saving.

The savings in the long term are particularly obvious when one considers the problem of flammable  cladding, which, in my home state, may have been more widely used because of the elimination of building inspectors in the 90s . . .

In the meantime, we’ve moved, and I’m glad because, in addition to other reasons, I have no evidence other than unsworn word of contractors that the stormwater drainage in our street was built right …