By Blessing V. Bonga
A systematic portfolio approach and digital collaboration, are two critical approaches that can be adopted in order to ensure a rapid improvement in terms of planning, funding modalities, building, and maintenance of infrastructure, thereby mitigating against depreciation of properties on the market, a senior industry official and expert recently said.
In a presentation in Harare last week, during the Zimbabwe Construction Industry Association (ZCIA) annual conference, Zimbabwe Cyber City and Zimbabwe Global Investments (ZGI) Chief Executive Officer, Ms. Tendayi Hlupo-Mamvura told delegates that working in silos has resulted in a lot of repercussions that are retrogressive to the construction sector.
“Our built environment faces serious delivery challenges, projects happen in silos, data is fragmented, and stakeholders often work in parallel rather than in partnership. I want to share two strategic tools, the systematic portfolio approach and the digital collaboration, which can rapidly improve how we plan, how we fund, build, and maintain infrastructure in our country.”
“Most of you know that because of the fragmentation of the infrastructure that we have, most developments are happening outside of the main sewer line, right? So, a lot of the time when people are looking for land to develop, the first question they ask is where is it in relation to a sewer line? And then when there is no sewer line, what people have been doing is coming up with solutions, right…Biodigesters, right?”
“So, we could be having 20 different developments at the moment, with a proposal submitted to build 20 different biodigesters. The cost of building 20 individual biodigesters, for 20 different developments is not efficient. We could simply all pull our resources together and we could improve the system, that is the infrastructure which is there right now, and we will end up with something that serves the whole city or the whole of Zimbabwe more efficiently,” she said.
Ms. Hlupo-Mamvura added that the unavailability of essential, basic infrastructure such as road networks, sewer and water reticulation facilities in most housing facilities had a negative impact on property value.
In the northern suburbs where the majority of residents have resorted to drilling boreholes to bridge the gap, properties have since lost value by close to 20%, a situation that is worrying to players in the real estate business.
This undesired state of affairs has also been exacerbated by individualistic approaches and working in silos.The industry expert added that 71% of public infrastructure projects in Zimbabwe are delayed, while 55% of projects experience cost overruns, while a staggering 80% of the projects that are built do not include life-cycle management plans.
Hlupo-Mamvura further bemoaned, “As long as we continue to build in silos, we will continue to build problems, which is what we’re doing right now. The problems we are facing today in terms of infrastructure support have not happened overnight. There are problems we have been building for over the last 20 years. So, the numbers don’t lie and we continue to look at the numbers and continue to go in the opposite direction in terms of our planning, in terms of what we actually do.”
Under a systemic portfolio approach, stakeholders move from managing stand alone projects to managing portfolios that are of interconnected projects which are tied to national goals.
This in turn will ensure alignment, while reducing duplication and subsequently enhancing a long term impact. Benefits that are then derived from such an approach include shared procurement, risk diversification, strategy alignment and consolidated reporting.
In relation to the suggested approaches, Ms Hlupo-Mamvura posed a pertinent question to the National Housing and Social Amenities Minister, Honorable Zhemu Soda with regards to progress made by Government in coming up with a digital platform for approval processes.
She argued that one of the biggest obstacles that industry players are faced with is to do with compliance issues.
Most land developers are said to be waiting for periods in excess of two years; this owing to, either limited resources or paperwork moving from one office to the other countless times.
“With regards to this platform, I think this is a very welcome proposal that will enable quick approvals to be achieved as a result of a platform like this. But let me indicate that already you might have noticed that the government has taken a lead in ensuring that a number of hurdles that have been affecting our investment environment within a number of sectors are eliminated.
“We have started the process of streamlining a number of processes including the levies, including taxes, the permits, the bureaucracies that people face on a day-to-day basis whenever they are transacting with government. So this would be a welcome initiative so that in the process of streamlining our activities and the various stages for which projects are subjected to, we will consider coming up with this platform,” responded Minister Soda.
The Minister went on to explain that Government was on a drive across all ministries to improve efficiency in terms of the ease of doing business.
As such the issue of coming up with a digital platform would also include the ministry of Local Government, where most of these permits and approvals are done. This would ensure that processes would be streamlined to reduce the turnaround times for various projects and investments.