Inspecting Organisations

By tradition construction is carried out throughout the world by the process of contracting. Hence, all government/semi-government work departments and almost all big construction conglomerates are basically inspecting organisations. The work is either delegated to them by different government departments or agencies, or procured in open market through competitive bidding as prime contractor. In both cases, the work is carried out through a series of contracting and subcontracting chain. The basic functions of such agencies are monitoring, coordinating and controlling the execution of work by different contracting agencies through the process of contract management. 

The organisational structure of almost all the inspecting organisation as they exist today are machine bureaucratic. The tasks are grouped 'into functional departments, centralized authority and decision making process that follows a rigid chain of command and an elaborate administrative set up. Rigid rules, regulations and procedures, however, inappropriate and uncontextual they may be, pre-meat the entire structure substituting for managerial discretion. These standardised operations coupled with high nationalistic and rigidity leave little scope for innovative and creative decisions. 

The advantage of existing form is that the inspecting organisations are capable of performing routine activities in an efficient manner. Since these conditions do not require innovative and creative decisions, the tasks can be performed by less talented, and hence less costly middle and lower level engineering managers. 

However, in new and complex situations, that do not fit into the standardized pattern, and this situation is fairly common in real life constructions, the whole decision making process becomes chaotic. Every person pushes the decision making to somebody else and the organisation becomes standstill. The obsessive concern with following the rules and little tolerance to failure by the system, kills all the initiatives and creativity of its human resource. The productivity, performance and quality becomes secondary considerations, before the procedures. There is no wonder that time and cost overruns on all public sector and government projects are present more as a rule than exception.