By Wilfred Golden

National Construction Industry Council (NCIC), says it is now working on a National Infrastructure Maintenance Strategy(NIMS) for it to achieve its mandate of service excellence, regulation and compliance, promotion and development as well as strategic partnership.

Chief Executive Office at NCIC, Gerlad Khonje made the sentiments during an interface with network of journalists in construction held in Salima where he disclosed that the strategic plan has some core values which are quality driven, integrity and professionalism, partnerships, agility as well as stakeholder focus which will help in accelerating delivery in the construction industry.

“As NCIC you are aware that our mandate is on promotion, development and regulation of the construction industry, basically we are here for the fourth pillar in our strategic plan which is strategic partnership, for us to ensure that there is quality infrastructure in the country it requires the participation of various stakeholders, and the media are very key in that regard, that’s why we are here.

“So we want to share with the media in terms of various interventions that the council is doing, as well as sensitize stakeholders in terms of various aspects concerning infrastructure development, taking in mind that the infrastructure development is a very unique Industry taking that it is a complicated Industry and it involves alot of processes, so in that regard we have put together, Malawi infrastructure delivery standards, these are guidelines which will help every stakeholder in terms of how projects can be conceived, planned, designed, procured, executed as well as maintained so we are sharing with the media on that,” Khonje said.

He also mentioned infrastructure delivery management standards, where the council will be looking at how projects should be planned, how projects should be budgeted for, as well as in the issue of managing costs where they developed Costs Indices which will be working as a guide on what could be expected in terms of costs.

On the part of quality standards in different construction projects Khonje said as a Council they have been proactive in ensuring that the projects are planned and executed with the quality mind set.

“The strategic plan which i have just highlighted to you has a vision of transforming the construction industry to a quality driven and sustainable construction industry that means all the processes leading to infrastructure delivery has to have quality in mind, that being the case, we have not stopped there, we are actively monitoring various projects, and you are also aware that we introduced infrastructure technical Audit, and that Audit meant to be mainstreamed in every project, as NCIC, we piloted those audit in just three projects and the findings are very reveling in terms of challenges that are there, in project implementation and in ensuring that there is quality in infrastructure delivery,” Khonje highlighted.

On her part Vice, chairperson for the network of journalists in construction, Rose Kamera said evidence based reporting in issues of construction is very crucial to every journalist in order to make sure that the information that is being mainstreamed is bringing impact to the public.