We need to develop our practice to compete with foreign firms —Odetoye

Adeniyi Odetoye was the President of Association of Town Planning Consultants of Nigeria (ATOPCON) until his death in a gas tanker explosion that rocked Opic Plaza in Lagos at the weekend. In his last interview with DAYO AYEYEMI, a week ago, he spoke about the essence of the association’s annual professional workshop; need to enhance capabilities of town planning consultants to compete favorably for jobs with their foreign counterparts.

What is the focus of this mandatory professional workshop?

The major challenge facing planning consultants is that a whole lot of us practice without understanding what project procurement is all about. The truth is that we can’t have sustainable practice if we don’t get involve into projects. Why a whole lot of us complain about not having project, we have thousands of projects being shunned out everyday.

For this reason, we decided on this topic that, there is need for us to empower our consultants to have clear understanding of what needs to be done. What are the things involved that would enable us have opportunities, have access to various projects that are being given out? We discovered that competitive bidding process entails quite a lot of things in terms of bid, expertise and in term of administrative procedures as an organisation. So if you don’t have understanding of that, even when you have professional understanding of the project that are  being bided for without the necessary prerequisite that will enable your firm to be prequalified,  there is no way you will get involve with it. We want to empower ourselves with the necessary instruments to enable us get involve in project.

What clear knowledge does a young town planner needs to bid for project?

Project  procurement is not just about having understanding of the practice, it has to do with whole lot of things – documentations, regulatory, compliance and what you need to turn out in term of prequalification documentations. You see a whole lot of us practice because of understanding. Yes, professionally we are qualified, we understand what it entails, but we take for granted other components that will empower us and give us the leverage. For instance, by virtue of the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA), you have certain documentations that will enable you access certain number of projects.  For the project that runs into several millions of naira, there are levels of activities that must have taken place in your organisation. There are levels of documentations you ought to have put in place. And aside from that, there are also levels of trainings. That mandatory workshop programme is about empowerment, a kind of training.

What is the main advice for members?

Members need to partake in all future bidding processes. We need to develop our practice in such a way that we need to compete favorably with foreign firms.  What we had in the past is where the foreign companies would come, pick the project and also engage us to implement the project. So why don’t empower ourselves in such a way that rather than being sub-contracted for the job, we can also bid for the job and implement. So it is all about capacity building. We want our people to believe in themselves, develop themselves, so that going forward; we will be able to pick the projects. The truth about urban planning is that it is only people with local understanding that understand our peculiar planning issues. If we are able to develop our capacity, we should be able to proffer solutions to the challenge we are having in the built environment.

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