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The estimate is presumed to be less than the Chief Resident Engineer's. Has the cost of these initial items then been spread over the whole work?
(b) Government to maintain its contract with the Consulting Engineers, and its supervision over the Colony's expenditure, and in order to ensure that the progress made is adequate, and promises completion within the time limit, and that the work is being performed up to specification must maintain an effective supervision. Is this allowed for in the anticipated economy?
(c) In order to guard against inferior work, or undue delay the contract must provide for revocation at periodical intervals if work due to be done by a certain date is in arrears, - thus the supervising staff practically remains, the office returns cannot be eliminated, and the contract in order to ensure no undue delay must be divided into periods. Little remains which cannot rightly be called piece-work on a large scale with forfeits for arrears.
Mr. Ives seemed to me to be a little confused in his ideas on this subject. He spoke of Government putting on men to hasten the work if the contractor was behind time, and charging this against the contractor. This I think would be impossible in the conditions of Tunnel Work and it assumes an independent status which the contractor in the circumstances described would not in reality possess. I have always expressed my predilection for Piece-Work or the 'Schedule of Rates' System which I believe if well organised is likely to produce good results. It does away with a certain amount of petty accounting, it tends to rapidity for a man is paid for just what he does and no more, it engages men of local experience in handling and in recruiting native labour, it leaves the supervising staff freer from petty detail; it saves the large contractor's profits still because the large risks are assumed by Government; it reserves the British market for the purchase of plant and preserves intact the control of the Government over expenditure and of