mainlaying consultants had been advised of the adverse comments about their performance. The Director of Water Supplies said that the mainlaying consultants had claimed that it was not part of their brief to design the level of the watermains. He was still corresponding with the mainlaying consultants and he had yet to obtain all the information needed to form an opinion on where the full responsibility lay.
7.110 The Committee enquired whether the mainlaying consultants were present at the hearing and were informed that they had been advised of the hearing but were not present. The Director of Water Supplies suggested that the consultants could be asked to attend a further session.
7.111 The Committee asked the Director of New Territories Development whether it was reasonable for the roadworks consultants to have assumed that the watermains had been laid in position correctly without having obtained confirmation or drawings showing their actual position. The Director said that it was reasonable and quite normal to do so. He cited as an example a recently completed job under another Government contract for which information on levels had been provided and it was assumed that the work had been done to the proper levels.
7.112 With regard to the differences in level between the as-constructed drawings and the findings of the roadworks consultants the Director of Water Supplies informed the Committee that the matter had not yet been resolved and agreed that he would pursue the matter with vigour.
7.113 The Committee asked the Director of Water Supplies whether his department needed to establish better procedures for the management of consultants. The Director said that his departmental procedures for the management and monitoring of consultants were adequate, being very similar to those in the Civil Engineering Manual. His documentation of those procedures was not entirely satisfactory because it was covered by several documents rather than by one. He was now taking steps to incorporate the procedures and instructions into a single comprehensive document. The Director stated that in monitoring the performance of a consultant, monitoring should not be confused with detailed checking which might be interpreted as interference. Having handed the responsibility for the engineering work to a consultant, it was not necessary to carry out measurements to see if something had been laid at the right level. He had learned a lesson from this episode. In similar circumstances in future, very precise instructions would be given. 7.114 On being asked whether there had been regular meetings between the Water Supplies Department and the consultants staff and whether the mistake could have been avoided if there had been such meetings, the Director of Water Supplies said that in a major project regular meetings were the norm. In this case the meetings might not have been as regular as would have been expected. However, this mistake might not have been avoided through regular meetings. This was not the sort of issue that was normally discussed in such meetings unless a specific question on the point was raised.
7.115 The Committee asked whether responsibility for the failure to lay the watermains at the correct level had now been accepted by the Water Supplies Department or the New Territories Development Department. The Director of Water Supplies said he had to accept that in the final analysis there had been sufficient information available to the Water Supplies Department to enable them to lay watermains at the right level. But the matter had to be put into perspective. His department laid some 130 kilometres of watermains every year and a very high proportion was in conjunction with roadworks. In the many years he had worked in the department this was the only case he could recall in which an error of this nature had occurred.
7.116 The Committee thought that the crux of the matter was the failure to pay attention to the determination of the vertical level of the main. This had to be the basic parameter in mainlaying. This failure would cost the taxpayer some $9.5 million.
7.117 Discussion on this item was then adjourned.
7.118 Second hearing. At the invitation of the Committee, the mainlaying consultants (represented by the Managing Director) appeared before the Committee. The Committee asked whether the consultants had received a copy of the verbatim report on the proceedings of the first public hearing of the Public Accounts Committee held on 25 November 1985 and asked whether the consultants had anything to add. The Managing Director said that following his initial investigation it appeared to him that too many assumptions had been made by competent engineers based on assumptions made by other engineers and that these were the main basis of the Director of Audit's comments. In his opinion, for unknown reasons the investigation had taken a wrong route with the result that the Committee had been misled. The final conclusion reached by the Director of Audit's report had been wrong. His own broad-brush conclusions were firstly, that on the question of the design documentation being prepared without a profile, this was not only because hard data had not been available but also because under the circumstances it could have been inappropriate and confusing to include the profile. No design documentation was perfect but in the context of this investigation the Design Division of the Water Supplies Department should not accept criticism for oversight or error. Secondly, he had concluded that as essential information was not lacking and the Construction Division of the Water Supplies Department had executed the contract as intended by the Design Division there had been no need for the Construction Division to clarify the position further in the handing-over notes to the mainlaying consultants. The Construction Division of the Water Supplies Department should not accept criticism for oversight or error in their method of construction or their handing-over notes. Thirdly, the mainlaying consultants had continued to lay the pipeline as intended, or would have been laid, by the Water Supplies Department. Similarly the mainlaying consultants did not accept criticism for oversight or error. Fourthly, based on these assumptions, he did not agree with the Water Supplies Department that the latter should shoulder some of the responsibilities for the additional costs. Fifthly, the information supplied by the New Territories Development Department had been sufficient for the design and construction of the pipeline. Some minor criticism could be levelled at this particular point but the blame, if there was any blame, should lie elsewhere.
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