Prevention of Corruption in Game Projects and Civil Engineering

Pay-to-play is a term used when money or favors are exchanged for services or favors being offered, and this constitutes to corruption and bribery. The civil engineering profession has experienced numerous pay-to-play scandals in the last several years, and this has resulted in not only huge financial losses but led to the diversion of resources, endangering of lives as well as the destruction of the environment. Corruption affects the number of projects awarded to genuine civil engineering contractors, and this compromises the safety of projects, and this means that such practices are incompatible with sustainable development. Since engineers are vital to the safety, welfare, and health of the public and promote the principles of sustainable development, they must ensure corruption is eliminated in the civil engineering industry. For those reasons, it is critical to hold constant dialogues regarding such ethical issues, and they should match the importance placed on safety, technical, deadlines, and cost issues.

Numerous scandals that have rocked the industry indicate that it is one of the most corrupt industry sectors in the country running into billions of dollars. This is not surprising, seeing as civil engineering impacts all facets of life, including housing, hospitals, schools, shops, offices, ports, railway lines, roads, airports, water supply, stations, sewage facilities, communication, and power (Krishnan, 2009). Large construction project is usually complex and encompass many players. This also means that the scale of financing is habitually huge, and for corrupt officials and politicians, such projects are the perfect opportunity to dispense patronage as well as accumulate illegal private wealth.

Despite it being hard to put a precise figure on the financial cost of corruption in this industry, it is evident that it runs in billions since it is a billion dollars industry. However, the cost is more than just financial, and corruption in this sector has resulted in dreadful impacts. For example, people have lost their lives after corruptly constructed structures collapse. Corruption has also led to the construction of unnecessary infrastructure, and this means resources been diverted from other pressing issues such as education, health, and water. Lastly, corrupt dealing in the industry sometimes means substandard infrastructure is the result, and this endangers the environment due to circumvention of standards and regulations.

The engineering industry has numerous forms of corruption, and the key ones include bribery and kickbacks, bid-rigging and collusion, leading companies, conflict of interest, and fraud. Public and project officials sometimes divert funds from projects by demanding bribes and kickbacks from contractors so they can award them projects, pay their invoices, approve contract amendments or other services. This happens to be the most common corrupt practice due to its ease to accomplish and lucrativeness as well as challenging to detect. Corrupt engineering contractors can defraud projects to help with recovering the costs of kickbacks and bribes and to inflate profits. They do this by overcharging services and goods, charging for services and goods they never offered, substituting lower quality and less expensive material, or billing lesser-compensated workers at higher rates.

Bribery and kickbacks are somewhat similar. Kickbacks, which are also known as extortion, are demanded by people in positions of power from individuals or companies seeking favorable decisions from them. On the other hand, bribes are given to a decision-maker by a party pursuing a favorable outcome. Kickbacks can be pursued by engineers or constructors, by civil engineers from prospective subcontractors, by engineers from material suppliers, by suppliers from potential subcontractors, or by permitting/regulatory agencies from civil engineers, suppliers, or constructors. Conversely, bribes occur in the opposite direction. Bribes and kickbacks result in resources allocated to important public projects to go into pockets of individuals. When bribes and kickbacks substitute quality and fair selection process, then project quality, as well as reliability, are negatively affected. Consequently, the people who need the project and are relying on it are the ones who end up suffering.

The flow of bribes and kickbacks are, at times, quite complex, and sometimes the money trails are difficult for auditors to track. However, there are several red flags that auditors can check, which are likely to indicate corruption. They include: a company doing business using a number of different names, recurring use of one organization, one company doing numerous various tasks, different companies using the same phone number or same address, a close and personal relationship between project parties, companies using false qualifications or presenting resumes of qualified individuals but eventually using less-qualified staff for the projects, and using vague or incomplete reference in contracts (Jong, Henry, & Stansbury, 2009).

There are a number of reasons why corruption and bribery are so prevalent in the civil engineering industry. The main one is, the projects are massive, and this means the volume of funds flowing through such projects is huge, and it makes it easier to inflate prices for kickbacks and bribes and not have it noticed immediately (Henry, 2017). It is also often hard to correctly evaluate the quality of the final project unit long after the project has been paid out. It, therefore, becomes hard to point out substandard work, and the results are often after contracts have ended. Lastly, there is a lot of bureaucracy that is present in the procurement process. Because of the sheer volume of investment needed for civil engineering projects, the public sector is normally responsible for contracting out projects to the private sector. This means that the government plays the role of the client and regulator. The procurement process is sometimes poorly enforced, and this offers the opportunity for pay-to-play.

The magnitude of corruption in the engineering sector must be understood to weigh the priority that should be placed in eliminating it. It is, therefore, essential to comprehend the size of the industry and the huge negative impact corruption has, and the numbers indicate that corruption in the industry can not be ignored. Many parties in the engineering industry have resolved to act and stop corruption. Even though corruption can happen during all phases of a project including tender, planning and design, execution, and operation and maintenance, one significant step to fight it is improving the transparency and openness of the decision-making process. It is possible to eliminate corruption in engineering projects, and this will be done by having all participants corporate in the development and implementation of effective anti-corruption practices. These practices should target both the demand (bribe receiver) and supply (briber giver) sides of corruption. Participants in this fight should include governments, project owners, funders, consultants, contractors, suppliers, and professional and business associations that represent all those parties.

It is also vital to increase awareness of the effect of corruption in the industry as well as promote hands-on, industry-led initiatives geared towards reducing and eventually eliminating corruption (Shan, Yun, Chan, & Hu, 2019). All members of the industry should be committed to implementing anti-corruption initiatives. All parties should be committed to implementing anti-corruption standards and templates set by governing agencies such as due diligence, independent monitoring, contractual commitments, government commitments, procurement requirements, corporate programs, training, rules for individuals, reporting, transparency, and enforcement. Engineering companies should also make efforts to attend the numerous varied presentations and training workshops held by different agencies to increase awareness of the need to prevent corruption in the industry. The government has also made efforts to promote the development of infrastructure anticorruption forums at national and regional levels, which are meant to be informal anticorruption coalitions between engineering organizations, business associations, firms with interests in the infrastructure, professional institutions, and engineering and construction sectors. Efforts are still made by many international, national, and regional engineering business associations and professional institutes, and they are increasingly taking the lead in endorsing anti-corruption measures (Krishnan, 2009).

It is also important for engineering companies to put up protective measures, including management systems that are transparent and open and implemented throughout the time projects run (UNESCO, 2010). They should also have project team cultures that are aware of the potential of engaging in corrupt activities, the actions, and steps they can take if they uncover corrupt dealings within the project and the overall beliefs attached to decent performance.

Engineering project is vital to the individuals whom they are performed for, and they are also crucial to the agencies as they implement their missions and finally to the contractors to help in keeping their business flourishing. All signs indicate that there will be other projects in the future, and if engineering firms want to thrive, they have to implement useful tools that promote ethical practices.