ECS Associates, an engineering and construction contracting firm, is commemorating its 30th year in business and its 30th year of using the NEC suite of contracts in South Africa.
ECS Associates, formally Engineering Contract Strategies, primarily focused its service on strategic advice, dispute resolution and training on the NEC (New Engineering Contract). Today, the core of the business represents the belief that collaborative relationships between main contracting parties within the value chain, employees and other stakeholders, provide a necessary formula for both improved performance and transformation during project management.
This winning formula has taken ECS beyond South African borders and oceans. ECS has been active with contracts in Mozambique, Côte d’Ivoire, the DRC, Iraq, and Peru. It has grown to 86 team members with 823 years of combined experience over the last 30 years. 1668 contracts have been serviced and 1516 customers trained on NEC.
Construction Contracting in South Africa
The company was founded in1993 in South Africa by Civil Engineer Andrew Baird, concomitantly with the publication of NEC. This connection arose through Andrew Baird’s employment as Project Manager of a 3600MW coal-fired Eskom power facility in the mid 1980s.
“I was determined to get rid of our very old bespoke contracts in use for the more than 1500 different contracts on the same site.” – Andrew Baird.
Wanting one form of contract suitable for any infrastructure works, Andrew collaborated with Dr Martin Barnes from ICE. He joined the team known as the Working Group who was developing a new contract for the UK Engineering and Construction Industry – The New Engineering Contract. The final version of the first ‘New Engineering Contract’ was published in 1993. Andrew has been a member of the London based NEC drafting Panel since its inception in 1993.
Eskom supported this new contract and so Engineering Contract Strategies was birthed in South Africa at the same time as NEC arrival onto the contract scene in the UK and South Africa.
Andrew is one of NEC’s authors and has been a panel member for over 20 years, who is acknowledged as the leading expert on NEC based procurement in Southern Africa. The combined experience of the ECS Associates team exceeds 100 years achieved in the engineering and construction contracting industry in Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East, South America and Europe.
ECS has taken the lead in establishing NEC contracts in South Africa, with Andrew as its founder and previous Chairman. ECS is the primary agent in Southern Africa to the sale of NEC documents and handbooks. ECS has been awarded NEC Commercial Partner status by ICE UK for delivery in Southern Africa of NEC’s accredited training programmes.