Mr. Kevin James:

I do not disagree. The surveying profession is there to do is the interface between the client, the designer and the contractor. It is really about understanding what is fair and reasonable. One must understand the dynamic around the constraints imposed by the funder and what is an acceptable margin to satisfy the pillar banks and funding institutions, the contractor's margin and that of the subcontractor. The intelligence at the moment is that when we came out of Covid, contractors were trying to their order books full. They were competitive. There was a lot of competition just to get mobilised and get surety in their work. What we are beginning to see now is a trend whereby because there is not enough capacity but there is so much demand, those in the supply chains have begun to increase their margins. We are beginning to see a bit of a delta in terms of specialist contractors who are sought-after subcontractors, for example, with margins beginning to increase. This puts an extra burden on the main contractor in terms of the ultimate costs. The main contractor is also looking at the risk profile of the public procurement and the contractual terms for projects.

The margin, to some extent, is dictated by the complexity of the project itself and that has to be looked at on its own merits. When one pre-qualifies contractors, which we do all the time, we look at their solvency, their credibility and at whether they are capitalised and can deliver the particular project. They have to have a margin. There must be a reasonable margin but, at the same time, we must make sure that no one is gouging the market. That is what we are doing in feeding information back to the clients.