Urja Khabar
Background
The history of engineering consultancies date back from the nineteenth century as a result of the expansion of railway projects in Britain with the exceedance of capacity of the developer and contractors. In the early days, the consulting sector was dominated by European firms, primarily, the British and French firms. Later, post Second World War, the American firms emerged as the leaders of the sector.
Whereas, in Nepal, the consulting services has been found to be available since mid-1960s with the engagement of private professionals by the government to provide services in small size engineering projects. With the establishments and increase in number of firms since Seventies and with the need to protect the consulting industry, Society of Consulting Architectural and Engineering Firms (SCAEF) Nepal was established in 1990.
From the past generations up to the modern world, the engineering consulting is the backbone of the physical infrastructure development resulting the economic development and well-being of every nation. In our context, the substantial amount is being spent in infrastructure development related transport, energy, healthcare, education, tourism, commercial buildings etc. through various government plans and also through private sectors. Bilateral and multilateral agencies are also funding in the sector. But still, the amount of budget allocations, investments and the pace of development is not sufficient to serve a larger society and demography of the Country.
Additionally, the rate of progress of on-going projects are also far from satisfactory. The overall slow progress in the sector could have been stemmed from various reasons, either technical or management or may be some other reasons. It’s a fact that the engineering consultant has been involved in almost all projects and its role in present circumstances cannot be avoided. Thus, the importance in relation to the involvement of consulting services and relevance of engineering value of proposition in nation-building is in the fast-ascending order.
About ChesCo
Chilime Engineering and Services Company Ltd. (ChesCo) was established on September 27, 2016 to provide complete engineering and services in the hydropower and other infrastructure section Nepal. The company is initiated and promoted by Chilime Hydropower Company Limited (CHCL) as pre-dominant share-holder with the 100% ownership. ChesCo was established with an objective to have a multi-disciplinary team of specialists to provide one-stop complete value chain consultancy services including highly technical and complex environments in the energy and other infrastructure sector.
ChesCo’s role in the nation-building has been encouraging despite being relatively a new leader in the industry and a public company. ChesCo has contributed in the nation-building process from various aspects. Since, the company has been in involved in the complete life-cycle of the infrastructure projects, which includes, but not limited to, project identifications, feasibility, preparations, design, project management, coordination, costings, planning, monitoring, rehabilitation, operation and maintenance, etc. The firm has been able to delivery the services through the domestic human resource and national experts.
The firm has been able to provide job opportunities and engagement of national experts; Additionally, the retardation of rapid brain drain of human resources and brain gain from Nepalese personnel having international experience road can be expected. The projects costs have been substantially reduced with the involvement of national or domestic firms compared to international firms. Also, a huge amount of capital flight out of the country is averted with the avoidance of international consultant where the domestic experts are capable of the services. Additionally, with the increase in the capability and experience of the Nepalese firms, there will be prospects for the firms to provide services abroad and has contributed to increase the revenue and capital in the country.
ChesCo’s - Three Pillars
Values: Integrity-Professionalism-Ethics are the core values ChesCo focusses and encourages within and outside the organization to achieve the objectives.
Human Resource: ChesCo has in-house experienced technical experts in Hydropower related works, Environmental, and other design works. ChesCo also utilizes expertise from its Pool of Experts having wide range of experiences or various sizes, nature and complexities.
Quality: ChesCo has adopted Continuous improvement principles, understanding of the overall cost of quality, realization that everyone is responsible for quality, customer satisfaction, process orientation, senior management commitment, knowledge sharing and so on. It is an ISO 9001:2015 certified company.
Road Ahead
At present, few hundred firms with around 200 SCAEF member engineering firms are involved in thousands of various sector infrastructure projects of different sizes and costs. Hydropower sector alone stands with the aggregated cost of already financed projects under constrcution amounts to more than four hundred billion Nepalese Rupee with an average cost estimate of Rs 200 million per MW. There is a long-list of projects in the pipeline at different stages of development. Additionally, there are thousands of projects in other sectors as well. In this situation, one can easily imagine the roles & responsibilities, opportunities and challenges of the consulting industry in the coming days.
In this situation, in order to successfully implement physical infrastructures, it is very important for all the stakeholders and actors has to be prepared and needs to review, update, change and/or make provisions, as necessary, for the foreseeable future.
Firstly, at the policy level, (a) human resources need assessment and human resource plan and policy, based on the industry growth and forecast; (b) The firm ratings; (c) Capacity Building of consulting firms; (d) Domestic Firm Preference in PPMO; (e) Firm Sustainability Policy; (e) Ease for Technology Transfer and Strategic Partnership/Collaborations with International Firms; (f) Cost Estimate based on Competitive Rates and Person-Month Quality; (g) Transparent and Efficient System (h) infrastructure master plan.
Secondly, at implementation level, (a) competent renumeration; (b) capacity building; (c) integrity, professionalism and anti-corruption; (d) Timely and Qualitative Delivery; (e) capacity building both firm and individual.
Conclusion
Therefore, the consulting industry should be prepared in advance to be able to deliver the services considering the enormous growth expected in infrastructure sector. ChesCo shall be a prominent player in the industry for the sustainable development of the country and building the nation by providing consulting services to the Client’s satisfaction within budget and on schedule with best practices by adopting highest integrity, standards and professionalism.
Mr. Thapa is the Chief Executive Officer and Mr. Poudel is the Civil Engineer, ChesCo; this article is taken from the Urja Khabar bi-annual Journal published on 22nd June, 2022
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