Multi Outcome Construction Policy (final report)

The sponsoring agency: The Department of State DevelopmentThe implementation of the Local Industry Policy imposed a number of costs on theDepartment of State Development. In relation to the staff resources allocated to thepolicy, the policy officer that we interviewed estimated that within the Department,there was probably the time of ½ a full-time position allocated to the day-to-dayimplementation of the policy. In terms of the staff resources in the Industry CapabilityNetwork, ICN, he noted that there was initially one full-time person, but there is nowprobably in the order of 3 to 3½ people. Hence, between the Department and the ICNthere are approximately four full-time positions associated with the day-to-dayimplementation of the Local Industry Policy.The implementation of the Local Industry Policy also generated costs associated withthe development of the implementation guidelines for the policy. The policy officernoted that whilst the policy document had specific outcomes in it, the Department didnot have any direction in terms of implementing the policy. The development of theseguidelines apparently required the input of staff resources primarily from theDepartment of State Development and the Department of Public Works. Apparentlythe development required six meetings and, thus, in total, represented a relativelysmall additional cost.The policy officer that we interviewed asserted that a weakness of the policy, whichcould have imposed additional costs on the agencies that were subject to it, was itsuniversal nature. That is, the policy did not take into account the need for orappropriateness of the policy in particular circumstances:“If you are putting up a $5 million school out in Longreach or somewhere likethat, it’s going to be all Bessablock and it’s all going to be local.… So do wereally want to go chasing that? And the answer is no, because it was puttingan imposition on agencies to do something that wasn’t going to make adifference. And in developing the guidelines for implementing the policy, wedeveloped a terminology in terms of generic projects, and a generic project88