Is supervision a matter of governance?
It was in 1997 that the then Minister of Housing (Dr. Akhundi) issued a 7-page circular that provided all engineering service referrals to employers and changed the referral process in all provinces.
With a 180-degree turn, the new minister required the engineering organizations to refer the matter of supervision equally [and not with prioritization].
The mass producers did not like the new notification and filed a complaint with the Administrative Court of Justice and were ordered to stop the new minister’s directive.
Now that within a year, two completely opposite attitudes have been expressed by two ministers in the same government, the only solution is to answer the question that basically the matter of building supervision is a sovereign matter that should be carried out by organizations or even general housing administrations, or something else. Is it sovereign that employers are free to choose supervisors?!
Governance attitude to supervision
Those who are in favor of selecting the supervisor by the provincial organizations [the current minister] believe that the building is considered a national capital. Therefore, supervisors should be chosen without the opinion of the builders who are its short-term beneficiaries.
A non-sovereign approach to supervision
Those who are in favor of the free and non-authoritarian choice of building supervisor engineers [former minister] rely on the right of citizenship and free economy and believe that building investors basically have the right to choose their technical agents, including the supervisor.
It can be seen that both spectrums rely on one of the basic and national rights and it is not possible to condemn any of the two attitudes from this point of view. But in the meantime, a new literature was proposed by Abbas Akhundi, which was neglected in the midst of his numerous directives, which will probably be the solution and opening of the knot of referrals in the matter of supervision.
⁉ Is supervision a matter of governance?
Perhaps the answer to this question can be found in the work triangle in the country’s technical and executive system, which is older than the country’s engineering system. In the technical and executive system of the country, the employer chooses the monitoring team to control the performance of the implementation team [contractor]. Therefore, the employer has the right to choose the executive and supervisor.
The most important difference between the country’s technical and executive system and the country’s engineering system is that in the engineering system, the investor is mostly the builder himself, and therefore the definition of employer and contractor in the field of construction sometimes faces contradictions.
Therefore, Abbas Akhundi made a distinction between inspection and supervision in his circulars and defined supervision as a non-sovereign matter and instead focused the role of inspection on the municipality, housing and urban development.
Summary:
It can be clearly said that the work of supervising engineers is to protect the interests of the employer and monitor the performance of the executive, and therefore the selection of the supervisor by the employer will be correct. With the explanation that the necessary structures to separate between the competent executive and the investor in the engineering system of the country should be created.
The pulse of engineering
Pourbakhri; Member of the building engineering system of Ardabil province
@MohandesinAlborz news source
This post is written by KEYVAN310