PERSPECTIVES
of nature for the benefit of mankind,”
Why Flyovers Will Fall
Decline of the Civil Engineering
Profession in India
Shirish B Patel
The coal secretary recently
blamed the “5Cs”— Central
Vigilance Commission, Central
Information Commission,
Central Bureau of Investigation,
Comptroller and Auditor
General and the courts—for
inhibiting quick and effective
decision-making and impeding
the country’s development. The
steady and continuing decline of
the civil engineering profession
in India has its roots in policies
mandated by the Comptroller
and Auditor General in regard
to the procurement of
consultancy services.
Shirish B Patel (shirish@spacpl.com) is a
civil engineer and urban planner who was in
charge of planning, design and execution in
Navi Mumbai during its first five years.
32
T
he collapse of a flyover under con-
struction in Kolkata on 31 March
killed 26 people and injured 90.
The flooding in Chennai in early Decem-
ber 2015 killed 280 and what was inex-
plicable was how long it took for the
floods to recede. These disasters, and
many more in recent years, illustrate
their common root: the decline of the
civil engineering profession in India,
and the evolution of government procure-
ment policies in regard to professional
services that initiated and now increas-
ingly accelerate this decline. These poli-
cies encourage the appointment of civil
engineering professionals who quote the
lowest fee, not those who can deliver the
best outcomes.1 Contrast this with the
way one would select a doctor or a lawyer
or a chartered accountant.
What Is Civil Engineering?
Seventy years ago, at the time of inde-
pendence, the top choice of young stu-
dents entering engineering colleges was
civil engineering; followed by mechanical,
then electrical and finally metallurgical
engineering. Today it is computer science,
electronics, electrical engineering, foll-
owed by mechanical or metallurgical,
with the last, least desired option being
civil engineering. There is practically no
student now for whom civil engineering
is the first choice on entering an engi-
neering college. No wonder that for nearly
all graduates today civil engineering is
a rite of passage into the job market, not
a profession that inspires commitment
or passion.
Before asking what has occasioned
this amazing decline it might be worth-
while to spell out what civil engineering
is all about. Earlier it was often con-
cerned with “…directing the great forces
MAY 14, 2016
which led to a preoccupation with dams,
hydroelectric projects, irrigation canals
and massive water supply schemes. But at
all times, its central concern has been the
totality of the built environment, including
roads, railways, bridges, harbours and
every conceivable kind of building, from
a simple house to a skyscraper or a
stadium. Respect for the natural envi-
ronment was always an important con-
cern, as can be seen from the design of
so many bridges that are aesthetically
pleasing and blend well into their
surroundings.
An equally important goal in civil
engineering is economy. It used to be
said that a civil engineer can do for one
rupee what any fool can do for two.
Economy in project cost and economy in
the use of raw materials are both funda-
mental objectives for a civil engineer.
Respect for the Environment
Civil engineering has many specialisa-
tions within it, like roads and railways,
docks and harbours, bridges, tunnels,
water supply, sewerage, drainage, struc-
tural engineering for buildings, among
others. The most recent entrant to this
diverse group is environmental engineer-
ing—a branch of civil engineering that
deals with minimising any damage that
may be caused to the natural environment
by a particular construction project.
The best demonstration of this inte-
gration of environmental concerns with
a major construction project is perhaps
Hong Kong’s new Chek Lap Kok airport.
Two small hilly islands, 25 km distant
from the city’s downtown, were flattened
and the rubble from cutting them was
used to fill the space between. Connecting
to the mainland for both high-speed rail
and road traffic required two bridges
and two tunnels and a six-lane express-
way. In the context of all this massive
work, extending over seven years, the
Hong Kong government took several
mitigation measures to keep the loss of
wildlife and habitats at a minimum.
Ecological studies of the local wetlands,
seagrass beds, and mangrove communi-
ties were undertaken, resulting in the
vol lI no 20 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

replanting of mangroves and woodlands
and the relocation of a colony of Romer’s
Tree Frogs (Howlett 1996).
The British Airports Authority provided
airports expertise, but the entire design
and engineering was entrusted to three
private consulting firms.2 After 70 years
of independence, there is no Indian
design firm that could provide even a
tiny fraction of the capability required
for such a project. We need to ask
ourselves why.
In-house vs Consultancy Skills
At independence, consulting firms in the
field of civil engineering were few and
tiny. There were some architectural
practices, and small firms of structural
engineers, with a handful of larger firms,
rarely exceeding 100 personnel in size,
providing services mainly to steel plants
and big industry. The engineering know-
how was scattered among officers in
government, who practised their skills
almost entirely on their own turf, almost
never being invited to apply these skills
elsewhere in the country.
Typical among these was N V Modak,
who was city engineer for the Brihan-
mumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC),
and in that capacity oversaw the con-
struction of Vaitarna Dam (the lake is
also called Modaksagar Lake) and the
strengthening of Tansa Dam, both critical
to the water supply of Mumbai. He also
had expertise in sewage handling and
garbage disposal, and reclamation of
low-lying land. He published a book on
town and country planning, co-authored
with V N Ambedkar, and together with
Albert Mayer published An Outline of
a Master Plan for Greater Bombay. But
his skills, however remarkable, remained
confined to the area under the jurisdiction
of his employer, the BMC. He, and the
support team he must have inevitably
built up, could serve no wider clientele.
Similarly, the Bombay Port Trust (BPT)
engineers developed considerable exper-
tise in the design and supervision of a
variety of marine structures, from jetties
to quay walls to dry docks and their
gates. But that team and their skills were
again confined to the area under the
jurisdiction of their employer, the BPT. If
BPT had decided to have an independent
Economic & Political Weekly EPW MAY 14, 2016
PERSPECTIVES
consultancy arm, it could have advised else. So, for example, if a major new dry
ports around the country. Certainly its dock is to be built in South Mumbai,
officers had the necessary experience at which is not a particularly sensible loca-
that time, and could have trained their tion from the point of view of inviting
younger colleagues. Ideally, given the enemy attack to a concentration of both
experience their design and supervision people and installations, nor is it eco-
staff had, and given that the BPT had not nomical compared to other locations in
much further immediate work in mind, the country on account of the extensive
it would have been ideal if the design reclamation required, then it behoves
and supervision staff had been hived off the responsible civil engineer to protest
into an independently-managed consul- that such a project is against the national
tancy firm. The merit of an external interest, instead of participating in the
consultancy service over in-house skills invitation to bid for the assignment.
is that the expertise acquired by the con- Civil engineering consultancy fees are
sultant can be extended to other projects usually a tiny fraction of total project
elsewhere in the country or abroad, and cost. The difference between a good
this builds up their expertise further. consultant and an indifferent one will
Next time you want something done invariably reflect in life cycle costs for
in-house, you have access to all the skills the project. This includes not just initial
you had earlier, now further enhanced. costs, which should anyway be close to
Good consulting firms are always the lowest possible, but also the repeat
those that protect their client’s interests, costs (and client headaches) on account
and keep this at the forefront of their of subsequent maintenance and repairs.
minds. They act as if they were on the The resulting savings in the project can
employees’ payroll of the client. In effect sometimes far exceed the totality of the
they are the client’s temporary, special- consultancy fee. If the consultant is well
ised professional arm in their particular above average, the client will be rewarded
area of expertise. They act on behalf of not only with an economical and trouble-
the client to protect his interests above free project that functions well, but also
all else—it is only on that basis that they one that is aesthetically pleasing.
can earn a reputation and attract not
only new clients but also repeat clients, Procurement Procedures
the older ones, who will come back to When selecting a lawyer or a doctor, no
them again and again. Ideally—although client asks for competitive bidding, and
this is not always found in practice—the then awards the work to the lowest
consultant should put his client’s interests bidder because a low fee is invariably,
above his own, offering a better solution and correctly, associated with inferior
even if it means more work for himself. service. When a client’s personal inter-
There is one caveat to the primacy of ests are at stake, he will always look for
the client in the mind of the consulting the best lawyer or doctor he can find
civil engineer. And this is that the within the fee that he is prepared to pay.
ultimate client, the one that stands even Contrast this with the way in which
above the one that is paying his fees, is government organisations, and some
the public. The interest of the public is private ones too, select their civil engi-
paramount, and overrides everything neering consultants.
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vol lI no 20 33
PERSPECTIVES
There is a faint nod in the direction of
the notion that quality matters in profes-
sional services. The government agency
responsible for a project can make a
short list of approved consultants. And
even among these there can be a rank-
ing according to competence. This leads
to the 80:20 formula, where 80 marks
are assigned for technical competence,
and only 20 to the financial bid. This
looks eminently reasonable, and gives
the impression that a high weightage is
being given to quality. But in practice,
the 80 marks are divided into so many
for financial strength, so many for number
of staff, so many for previous experience
of such projects (regardless of whether
you did a good or a bad job), and so
many for the technical quality of the
proposal. Anyone with less than 70 marks
is ruled out. So the client is left with a
short list of consultants who have tech-
nical marks within a very narrow range,
generally between 70 and 80 marks,
put together on merit plus a number of
peripheral considerations.
Now we come to the financial bid. All
bids are opened and the lowest bidder
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34
is given a mark of 20. Everyone else gets
a mark depending on the ratio of his bid
to that of the lowest bidder, multiplied
by 20. Thus if someone quotes twice
as much as the lowest bidder he will get
10 marks and someone who quotes
higher will get even less. So if any com-
petent professional puts in a bid with a
perfectly reasonable fee, anyone else
who has made it to the short list has
only to quote half that amount and be
assured of a 10-point advantage in the
computation of marks. The underbidder
will almost certainly get the job. To
make ends meet he must then either
(i) extract money from contractors be-
cause it is in his hands to certify
their payment (and remember that im-
plicit in this is some softening of quality
control), or (ii) underpay his staff, or
(iii) depend on novices, or (iv) cut
corners in developing the design, the
consequences of which will be, at the
very least, to push up project costs, if not
actually endanger the design. Whichever
it is, the client gets an inferior design,
and probably almost certainly spends
much more on the project than he has
MAY 14, 2016
saved on consulting fees through this
process of selection.
Mixing financial bids with evaluation
of merit is a sure way of ensuring that
the best consultant will not be selected.
The World Bank earlier had an excellent
system of consultant selection. All those
invited to bid were asked to submit their
technical proposal and their financial
bid in separate sealed envelopes. First,
only all the technical proposals were
opened. Selection was on merit alone,
all aspects considered, usually by a com-
mittee. Then the financial bid of only
the selected best consultant was opened.
If negotiations with him concluded satis-
factorily, then all the remaining financial
bids were returned unopened. If negoti-
ations failed, then the bid of the top
ranked consultant was put aside, and
the financial bid of the second-best was
opened, with the clear understanding
that the client could never go back to the
first bidder. This ensured that the client
would be reasonable in his negotiations.
It was a simple way of ensuring that
work was awarded to the best, or close
to best consultant, evaluated on purely
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and state-wise
annual data from
1980 onwards.
Structured in six
major sections :
• Demography
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vol lI no 20 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

technical grounds, undiluted by mone-
tary savings.
Another simple way of selecting the
best consultant would be for the client to
fix the fee he wants to pay. Selection
would then be from among the consult-
ants who are prepared to work for this fee.
Thereafter the selection process proceeds
to select the best qualified entrant. It
may be that some desirable consultants
are not prepared to work for the fee on
offer. In that case the client needs to up
his fee to the point at which such superior
consultants are prepared to work on the
project. At any rate, such a process en-
sures that work is assigned on merit,
among those competing. As a conse-
quence, firms will then strive to increase
their own merit, over time, rather than
focusing on how to cut their fees.
In any case, savings in consultancy
fees are often trivial in the context of
the total project. Savings resulting from
more efficient design, particularly at
the conceptual stage, can far outweigh
the total consultancy fee. One personal
experience of a project in Bengaluru was
the addition of a latecomer to the short-
list, on instructions from Delhi. This
latecomer quoted a fee 1% below that of
the best consultant. The chief engineer
privately said he knew that by awarding
work to the lowest the project cost
would go up by 25%, but his hands were
tied by audit, and he said he had no op-
tion but to award the work to the lowest
bidder. Project costs did indeed go up,
by more than the anticipated 25%, and
the low bidder eventually earned the
same fee that would have been paid to
the best consultant. But the client ended
up with a much costlier project overall.
So what indeed did the Comptroller
and Auditor General (CAG)’s procedures
achieve in this case? The answer is: a
poorer quality project at significantly
higher total cost and all in the name of
minimising corruption.
The long-term consequence of this
consultant selection process has been
that fees have steadily drifted down-
wards. Consultants themselves are much
to blame for this, by striving always to
undercut each other. Their focus is no
longer on keeping up with the latest
developments, or on improving the quality
Economic & Political Weekly EPW MAY 14, 2016
of their work. The focus is on cutting
costs. One result is that civil engineers’
salaries have steadily fallen, until now
they are well below those of their peers
in other professions. This discourages
new entrants, who are increasingly the
dregs among those who enter engineer-
ing college. Quality further declines.
Design and Build Contracts
As a result of bad experiences with
consultants, clients are increasingly
inclined to award work to contractors
on a “design and build” basis. That is,
the contractor is asked to take responsi-
bility also for the design, and is free to
choose the consultant with whom he
wants to work. The consultant’s design
is often “proof-checked,” which means
that another “proof consultant” is ap-
pointed by the client, for a trivial fee,
to check and approve the calculations of
the main designer. This approval pro-
vides no room for conceptual improve-
ment in the design, or indeed protection
against uneconomical and over safe de-
signs. It merely provides a check that
according to calculations the design is
safe. There is no check that it is indeed
close to the most economical, thus defeat-
ing one of the key objectives of good
civil engineering.
But there is a much stronger reason
for not awarding “design and build”
projects where the contractor has no
financial interest in the project after its
completion. Flyovers are a typical exam-
ple where the contractor has simply to
deliver the project, and that is the end
of the client–contractor relationship. In
such cases it is always better to have a
consultant who does the design, and a
contractor who executes the work. This
is because the objectives of consultant
and contractor are different. The con-
sultant’s basic objective is to protect the
interests of his client (from whom he
expects much future repeat work). The
contractor’s is to make a profit. The
contractor will want to get away with
minimum compliance with specifications.
The consultant will want high quality
and minimal subsequent maintenance
problems. His overseeing of the contrac-
tor’s work is a vital part of the project
process. He provides the necessary checks
vol lI no 20
PERSPECTIVES
to ensure that the project is built with
the quality that his design demands.
Indeed, contractors’ and consultants’
objectives are so different that some con-
sultants are known to produce one kind
of design for a contractor who is their
client, and a different kind of design when
the owner is their client. For a contractor
they will cut corners and produce a min-
imal design that best uses the equipment
the contractor already has. For an owner
they will produce a design that is opti-
mal for the project, with a minimum of
maintenance headaches thereafter.
To get the best of both worlds, the
client should appoint a consultant who
prepares a design on the basis of which
tenders are invited from contractors. But
contractors should also be permitted to
submit alternatives with their own
design. If this is found cheaper, the
client’s consultant much check and
approve the design, and supervise con-
struction, as before. If the consultant
sees his job as being that of protecting
his client’s best interests, these may well
be served by accepting an efficient
alternative to his own design. It must be
admitted however that not all consult-
ants are open-minded and self-confident
enough to admit that in particular
circumstances there could be alterna-
tives superior to their own design.
The “design and build” alternative,
when entered into directly by a client,
without a designer of his own, works
only if the contractor has a financial
interest in the performance of the pro-
ject after completion. This can apply, for
example, to airport design, where the
contractor has the concession to subse-
quently operate the airport for a speci-
fied period of time. It can apply to high-
way design where a toll is to be collect-
ed, and the contractor who built the
highway is charged with its mainte-
nance at his own cost thereafter for the
full concession period.
Conclusions
The flyover under construction in Kolkata
was presumably allowed under a design
and build contract. There was no inde-
pendent designer answerable to the
owner, to verify the construction, and
whose reputation hung on a trouble-free
35
PERSPECTIVES

and successful outcome. Several officers
of the contracting company have been
­arrested and charged with murder and
conspiracy to murder. This is absurd,
and cannot possibly be true, or proved in
court. The charge is pure showbiz,
­making a show of severity, while making
no attempt to discover or address the
­underlying cause. At the most the con-
tracting firm could be charged with neg-
ligence, but the real source of trouble is
the procurement process, which is guar-
anteed at its best to deliver mediocre
projects, and at its worst to deliver fail-
ures like this one.
The flooding that happened in Chennai
might be attributed to heavy rain and the
sudden opening of a dam’s floodgates.
But what is inexplicable is the time it
took for the water to recede. This can only
be because the city’s drainage ­systems
have been compromised, and that can
only happen if those in charge of systems
do not have the ­ordinary competence
that good civil ­ engineering demands.
All one can blame is the decline of the
profession, the u ­ ltimate root cause of
which is the framework for procurement
as determined, above all, by govern-
ment’s audit arms. These are so bent on
preventing corruption (which they are
manifestly unable to do) through setting
up procedures, that these very procedures,
by ­ignoring quality and even overall pro-
ject costs, by insisting that each element
be awarded to the lowest bidder, are
­hurting the country’s infrastructure in
ways these audit officers are incapable
of comprehending, because they have
­never seen better.
Equally culpable perhaps are the
­government officers who award work.
They have a poor understanding of civil
engineering matters anyway, because
the education system in that branch has
declined in step with the profession. Nor
have they had the advantage, in their
subsequent careers, of learning from
high quality professionals, because the
system of procurement has ensured they
learn only from the poorest ones. But
even if they know something is inadvis-
able, they prefer the route that will in-
vite no audit objections. After all, their
careers are unaffected by the quality or
success of the projects they deliver; they
get no special promotions on that
account. What does threaten to hurt
­
them though is the consequence of not
following stipulated procedure, for which
they will almost certainly be hauled up
by audit. So their focus has to be on pro-
cedure, not outcome. Flyovers may fall,
and cities flood, but as long as the speci-
fied procedures have been ­followed, no
blame will attach to the officers in
charge, nor to the very procedures that
brought this about.
NOTES
1 The coal secretary’s comment mentioned in the
blurb was reported in Times of India, Mumbai,
front page item on 6 April 2016.
2 Mott Connell (the Hong Kong office of the
United Kingdom ­consultancy Mott MacDonald),
Foster and Partners as architects and Ove
Arup as specialist structural designers for
the roof.
REFERENCES
Howlett, Bob (ed) (1996): Hong Kong Airport at
Chek Lap Kok, Hong Kong: H Myers, Govern-
ment Printer, http://www1.american.edu/TED/
airport.htm.
ToI (2016): “‘5Cs’ Also Hinder Decision-making: Coal
Secy,” Times of India, Mumbai, front page,
6 April, See Note 1.

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36 MAY 14, 2016  vol lI no 20  EPW   Economic & Political Weekly