The “Decentralization” portal has published a column by Oleksandr Nepomnyashchyy, President of the Interstate Consultants Engineers Guild. It focuses on one of the key challenges of Ukraine’s reconstruction — the organization of infrastructure project management and ensuring communities’ access to the necessary professional competencies.

The publication continues the discussion started on LB.ua with the article “Reconstruction does not start with concrete: Who should manage complex infrastructure projects?”

In his column, Dr. Nepomnyashchyy points out that as reconstruction scales up, communities are facing not only the issue of the availability of funding or specialists. Projects are becoming more complex and the number of their participants, procedures, requirements, and risks is growing. At the same time, the mere presence of a construction client, designer, contractor, supervision engineer, consultant, and international partners is not enough to ensure a managed process.

The next question is the organization of their interaction and responsibility for the integrity of project implementation — from concept to commissioning of the facility.

ICEG’s President pays particular attention to spatial planning of communities. Quality reconstruction begins even before a specific construction project appears as a community must understand how its territory will develop, where it needs new infrastructure, which solutions are priorities, and how they should be interconnected. Therefore, modern urban-planning documentation and comprehensive spatial development plans should not be a formal requirement, but one of the basic tools for the community development.

ICEG also sees the relevance of the problem during its direct work with local self-government bodies. Practical events ICEG held for communities demonstrate significant interest in project preparation, allocation of functions and responsibilities, engagement of external competencies, and professional management of implementation.

In international practice, various models are used for this purpose, including project offices, outsourced professional teams, and integrated project management. Significant experience in organizing complex infrastructure projects has also been accumulated within the FIDIC system, whose contractual and managerial approaches are applied in many countries around the world.

One of the professional instruments available to Ukraine is the consulting engineer. This institution is already legislated, however, the potential of this mechanism in the implementation of complex infrastructure projects is still not fully utilized.

At the same time, Dr. Nepomnyashchyy emphasizes that the discussion should not be reduced to promoting a single tool or profession. Different models may be effective for different projects. The main question is: What kind of the process organization will enable Ukraine to deliver complex infrastructure projects faster, to higher quality, and with a predictable result.

ICEG advocates an open professional dialogue between the state, communities, construction market, professional associations, and international partners regarding such mechanisms. Ukraine does not need to create all solutions from scratch as the world has already accumulated significant experience, including within the professional system of FIDIC. Simultaneously, international practices should not be copied directly, but adapted to the Ukrainian legislation, institutional system, and the real-life conditions of reconstruction.

Ultimately, this discussion is much broader than construction management.

The infrastructure that Ukraine is building today will serve for decades. The quality of today’s decision will determine capacities of communities, investment attraction of territories, quality of people’s lives, and to some extent, the future vector of the country’s development.

Therefore, a professional system of reconstruction management is needed not for the sake of the system itself. It should result in a modern, resilient infrastructure, and a country where people want to live.

Read column by Oleksandr Nepomnyashchyy on the “Decentralization” portal