Construction workers told of impending €3bn State spend

 Irish Water “ready to get shovels in ground” in projects worth €1.3bn, builders hear

EMPLOYERS who don’t adhere to the highest employment standards will be excluded from lucrative Government contracts as recovery and spending steps up, a builders’ seminar was told last week.

The warning was given as a national review of Government contracts comes in, which will reduce a widely criticised risk-bearing burden on contractors, introduced in 2007.

Over 200 representatives from some of Ireland’s largest building firms attended last week’s CIF’s southern region information session ‘The Projects 2015-2016, and How to Win them.’” Key speaker was Paul Quinn, the State’s first-appointed Chief Procurement Officer, who caught attention by noting that the State spend €8.5bn a year on goods and services, some €23m a day or one in every eight euros spent in the economy: €3bn of that is on construction.

While the drive was on to centralise procurement and bring in consistent standards for efficiency, this would not exclude smaller bidders for tendering and winning contracts, Mr Quinn promised. He encouraged use of the Tender Advisory Services wing of eTenders, to be launched next month.

Meanwhile, CIF’s Tom Parlon said he hoped last week’s EU announcement on quantitative easing would see a trickle down effect to the building sector.

The seminar heard that Irish Water (which deals with 4,500 suppliers) was “about to get shovels in the ground, on projects worth up to €1.3bn.

Details: CIF 021-4351410,