CIDB: Taking Responsibility Insensibly

The Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) is the Institution that was enacted by the legislature to promote the standards and quality of construction management and to built the framework of the construction industry best practices. This objectives could never be realized.

Firstly, the institution is more interested in generating revenue and tapping into the system to extract surplus wealth; if there ain't surplus, the extract whatever profits it could. They organize seminars for participants from the industry players but charged them for a fee. They oganized seminars and workshops for companies interested to be ISO9000 certified and charged them for a fee. They organized fee-based project management courses and are preparing a system to accredit project managers but they themselves and whoever their accreditors are, have yet to get themselves accredited by any respectable or recognized institution such as PMI or APM.

They organized all kinds of events, workshops and seminars for the industry players and charged them with fees. Yet the construction companies had to pay a levy of 0.25% for every project the had, whether private or public sector projects. Each year, there are more than RM30 billion worth of projects; so you can calculate what their income from levy is. So apart from hundreds of millions of levy collected, there are other income such as workers registration, certification and event management. Oh, and they need not publicly publish their accounts as this is provided for under the statute.

And there are bunches of "super professionals consultants" within the penumbra of the system who help promote these wealth generating activities; they call it win-win and of course the ultimate is who is paying?

They talk about globalisation and internationalisation, but we have pragmatic problem - defects and maintenance, slope failures, abandoned projects, the lack of competencies in project management and construction process management, poor quality culture and systems, etc, etc. Take the most recent issues of defects and maintenance failures - Putrajaya Immigration Complex, New Jalan Duta Court Complex, Putrajaya slope collapse, and those much earlier project failures such as MRR2, Computer Labs, Kuching Prison projects, Wetland projects, etc etc.

The ministry said they are preparing and are now in the process of drawing up a Building Maintenance Framework. What? Does it mean that over the decades JKR and the government had never operated defects and maintenance management using with a formalised framework? But they are ISO 9000 certified companies - JKR is ISO certified and Putrajaya is also ISO certified!

I had blog on numerous occasions about the Building Maintenance Framework and if they didn't understand, why didn't they ask me?

More surprising is the fact that CIDB is only involve in collections of monies and had nothing to contribute towards the government's and the industries need of such a framework. And they are shouting so much about globalization and internationalization of the Malaysian construction industry.

CIDB CEO Datuk Hamzah is the former CEO of Ahamd Zaki Resources Bhd, a class A contractor, and Tan Sri Wan Rahman who is now the chairman of CIDB was the former Director-General of JKR. Tan Sri Omar, another former D-G of JKR is also the director of CIDB. All of them are experts in the construction industry. What are they doing there? I won't dare to say they did nothing or contribute nothing (this is contempt) but it's about the forest and the trees - which is which? With due respect to them, particularly for the fact that I had admired them over the years, I just felt ashame that the industry is rotting and CIDB is docile and in a state of inertia.