The demoralising effect of commercialism

One of the things I've observed over the last three decades as the neoliberal ideology increases its pernicious influence in the world and, in particular - as far as this post goes - engineering, is the growth of a hardline form of commercialism. 

This is evident in the strict adherence to the letter of contracts, even if that is not to the benefit of the community. 

Let's say, for instance, that a pipeline has been designed in an office by a hard-nosed bastard with zero environmental awareness (let alone care) to go in a short line that involves cutting down a tree that shelters a neighbour's garden from summer sun, but, in the field the contractor and the superintendent (technically, the superintendent's representative) can see that for a minor amount of effort the tree can be saved. 

On the one hand, we have: 

• the pride and arrogance of the design office; 
• a contract to do X work for $Y; and 
• an unhappy neighbour who will hate not the contractor nor even the designer, but the principal - the water Authority who will want to crow and claim what a great job they think they've done. 

On the other hand, we have: 

• a reduction of effort in that the tree doesn't to be removed, offset by whatever extra effort needs to be made for the pipe;
  
• changes to the "as constructed" records (I once worked at an Authority - who haven't existed for decades - who refused to change drawings for any As Constructed changes as even a minor, utterly common sense change had to be approved in advance - which would have caused delays and claims for those costs: as a result, their beautifully preserved drawings had errors); 
• happier neighbour, superintendent's rep and contractor (no-one wants to be involved in a project that leaves bad will), and a MUCH stronger relationship of the water Authority.
  

Organisations are, as they have in the last decade or so become more ethical and inclusive and worker focused, more likely to take the views of the community into consideration (I can still remember the pleasure of the first community consultation I was  - peripherally - involved in, back in the 80s), and thus the above scenario is less likely to happen these days (the design is likely to be based on consultation that would have identified the above problem). 

However, what I want to point out is the demoralising influence of having the desire to serve the community cropped, time and time again, by hardline adherence to the words of a contract.

An example of that is when bidding projects, technical people may see a solution that would be good for the community, but because of a disagreement over the contract terms, it is abandoned, and possibly a more second rate solution adopted. 

Those slavering over achieving a slightly higher profit (often disguised as a different number, but that's what it is) will not be disturbed - and may even claim satisfaction at getting a better return by using people elsewhere, on less technically rewarding projects, but that's not what motivates the technical specialist, who will be left demoralised by being robbed of the opportunity to serve the broader community.

The situation has become worse as water Authorities introduce more hardline, one-sided, and , in my opinion, unfair contracts. I noted this when many of those organisations introduced a batch of changes to a changed standard General Conditions of Contract (here, in Australia) that was brought in in 1986 - changes obviously made with a view to turning them back to the one-sided 1981 version. 

There were at that time a lot of stupid remarks about what contractors could or couldn't do (some of the "thinking" on that is almost fantasy like), protecting the community's interest (it didn't - the protection was of managers' KPIs and, as outlined in the example above, may have been against the interest of the community [allegedly] BEING SERVED BY THAT AUTHORITY), and, frankly, a lot of those involved seem to be idiots with absolutely no practical experience in the water industry or construction and no conception of what the concept of service to the community represents. 

I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised: that was also the era when IPOCs were insisting on placing a dollar value on the environment. 

Unfortunately, those IPOCs seem to have gone on to take over the project management world. On the basis of my decades of experience, if a project manager has no technical literacy in the field of the project they are supervising, they are unfit to do the job. (At the very least they should pay a variation for all the time spent explaining fundamentals to them.)

We need more people with practical experience, people who understand that the risks of errors and the adverse health impacts on workers increases when we try to do things to an accelerated programme because some manager was too incompetent to plan far enough ahead - or because some vainglorious person wants to big note their alleged superiority by fast tracking something instead of allowing adequate THINKING time (which might mean someone else claims the glory). 

(This also applies to projects that are set as big ambitious goals: more people died in the US race to land on the moon than the three astronauts of Apollo 1 - engineers and probably others driven to commit suicide by the pressure. I'm also aware some older attitudes used to think it was acceptable to have one death per mile of tunnelling, for instance - so I'm glad the safety reforms here in the late 80s came in to being.)

We also need to avoid going back to the micro-managing worst and inflexibility of the 80s, which shut out innovation. It's reprehensible - from the broader community's perspective - that the response to that wound up throwing the baby out with the bathwater. 

We have a fairly comprehensive set of indices now to measure the performance of community serving authorities these days, but those are all based on fairly easily measurable, accounting style measures: where is the accountability for forethought, broader social impact of solutions (including on workers), and future proofing? 

More broadly, for all organisations (many of which have warped what used to be career planning into greater-servility-to-the-organisation planning), what effect is your commercialism having on workers? 

I've left companies and avoided others that either were, or seemed to be, too dollar driven. Time for people to start realising that not all humans are driven by the profit of their economic masters.

PS - it wouldn't hurt Contractors to stop being hard line bastards as well - there are some I won't bother to work for because of their sadistic pleasure in being as uncooperative as possible (and others I would support because they're quite the opposite)