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CONTENTS
PRINCIPLES
It is standard practice within South Africa for professional consultants in the fields of town planning, land surveying, civil and electrical engineering, architecture and quantity surveying to be employed in the development of the various components of human settlements. Furthermore, the public sector has the capacity to undertake only a few of these tasks itself - and usually limited to providing oversight and guidance.
When the implementation of the iSLP began (1993-94) there was a significant amount of suspicion within communities about the way that public sector institutions chose consultants (at least certain kinds of consultants). The concern was real - in some professions there had been great dissatisfaction for many years that certain firms were favoured and others totally ignored.
As a result the following was adopted as an iSLP Principle in 1993:
POLICY
AND PROCEDURE
FOR THE SELECTION OF CONSULTANTS
TO BE APPOINTED WITHIN THE iSLP
This document
relates to the appointment of Town Planners and
Civil Engineers for projects in the Serviced Land
Project:
POLICY
Clause 4.5 of the
iSLP Principles states that
"For each
project a compact will be formed consisting of a
broad range of representatives of the
communities for whom the project is intended,
the Province as implementing agency of the iSLP,
and other stakeholders (e.g. project funders)."
For
clarification, such compacts are likely to be
called "Project Committees", and in some
cases the community component of such committees
may be in the form of an inclusive "Residents
Development Committee" ("RDC").
Sub-clause 4.5i
states that one of the responsibilities of the
Project Committee is
"To make
recommendations to the Province regarding the
appointment of consultants for the
project".
The policy
adopted by the Province is to appoint consultants
on the basis of their competency and by a method
that promotes equity in the allocation of
commissions. This policy is to be applied within
the SLP, with the added dimension of offering the
Project Committee a choice of consultants to
consider before making its recommendations to the
Province regarding appointments. As a safeguard to
equity, consultants shall be required to disclose
any prior contact that they have had with the
communities involved in a particular project or
Project Committee, and the selection procedure
shall be structured in a way that discourages
prior contact between the communities and
consultants.
PROCEDURE
The following
procedure shall be adopted regarding the
appointment of consultants for each project in the
SLP:
1. The Province
shall nominate 3 consultants for each required
discipline and shall submit such names to the
Project Co-ordinator for comment.
2. The decision
on the 3 nominations for each discipline shall be
taken by the Project Management Committee.
3. The nominees
shall be informed of their nomination for
appointment in an un-named project, and requested
to make a presentation to the Project Committee at
a stated time and place. Should a nominee decline
such an invitation that shall be noted by the
Project Committee and a replacement nomination be
made by means of 1 & 2 above.
4. The Project
Committee shall be requested by the Project Co-ordinator
to attend a meeting at a time and place for the
purpose of receiving presentations from
unspecified consultants representing unspecified
disciplines and to formulate its recommendations
to the Province. All the nominees of a particular
discipline shall make presentations sequentially
at a single meeting. Each nominee shall be allowed
15 minutes in which to make a presentation.
5. Before the
start of each presentation each party present will
be required to disclose the nature of any prior
communication between members of the Project
Committee, including their constituencies, and the
consultancy. It will be made clear that evidence
at any stage of any failure to disclose such
information shall be grounds for the summary
cancellation of an appointment that results from
this selection procedure.
6. Immediately
upon completion of the said meeting the Project
Committee shall meet and formulate its
recommendation to the Province for the appointment
of consultants from those that have made
presentations in the meeting.
7. The Province
shall receive such recommendations and make the
final decision on the appointment of consultants.
The CPA shall inform the Project Management
Committee and the Project Co-ordinator of its
decisions, and the Project Co-ordinator shall
inform the Project Committee.
8. The brief for
each consultant shall be formulated by the Project
Committee.
IMPLEMENTATION
This procedure was implemented for the first two greenfields housing projects. It posed quite a challenge to consultants, and was of great interest to the Project Committees. It was an important step to take (a) to demonstrate the bona fides of the iSLP to community leadership, and (b) to demonstrate to the Province that the iSLP Principles would be strongly held to.
By the time the second round of greenfields projects required the appointment of consultants the Province had restructured its own selection procedure into something that was acceptable to all, and the community leadership had grown in their acceptance of the integrity of the Province. As a result, and in order to expedite the development process, the respective project committees requested that the Principle be waived and
that the Province select consultants in accordance with new national procurement norms established after the election in 1994. This has been successfully complied with ever since.
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