968 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION H, 
During recent years, there has been a very decided change in 
South Australia in the methods of carrying out our public works; 
the alteration has now developed beyond the experimental stage 
and become, apparently, a permanent arrangement. Formerly, 
we made our designs, drawings, and specifications, and called for 
tenders from responsible contractors for carrying out the work in 
accordance therewith, the superintendence alone devolving on the 
department, and the commercial profit or loss falling to the share 
of the contractor. _Recently—for political, social, and commercial 
reasons into which I cannot now enter—the large contractor has 
been practically eliminated, and the duties which devolved on 
him have now to be undertaken by the engineering officers in 
addition to those of designing and inspecting. This does not 
refer to so-called “relief works,” which must always stand alone, 
and of which we have, fortunately, but little experience ; nor 
does it refer to maintenance of existing appliances, but to the 
larger engineering works necessary for national development. 
The Government engineer is thus placed in an entirely new 
position. Upon him devolves the choice of workmen and the 
deciding of their rates of wages, consideration of the commercial 
questions involved in the purchase of materials, shipment and 
storekeeping, the carrying out of a complicated series of piece-work 
and petty contract arrangements, the whole being subject to 
criticism on the public press which was unheard of when the 
contractor dealt with these matters. He is also hampered by a 
series of regulations, which seem to him as if constructed for the 
purpose of hindering his work. 
Ultimately, most things resolve themselves nowadays into a 
question of cost, and the new development of Departmental versus 
Contract work must be prepared to stand or fall on application 
of the commercial test. How, then, do we stand in this relation? 
Generally, we proceed as follows :—A large work having been 
decided on and the money provided under Parliamentary vote, the 
working designs are prepared and a brief specification free from 
legal technicalities is drafted. This latter is really only a deserip- 
tion of the work, the printed volume of Standard Specifications 
being referred to by numbered paragraphs only. Materials which 
have to be imported are either indented for or procured through 
local merchants subject to inspection abroad, and no rejection is 
possible in the Province if the articles inspected have been sub- 
sequently identified at port of shipment unless there has been 
fraud. Workmen are engaged at wages which range from 5s. to 
7s. per diem, varying with the locality and the character of the 
work. Simple work is occasionally done by the piece, the men 
taking their own time and coming and going as they please. The 
better class of work is done by petty contract, when one man or 
a number of men together take up the work in definite quantities 
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