Sept / Oct 2016 | Business View Caribbean

120 September 2016 - Business View Caribbean Business View Caribbean - September 2016 121 moving an enormous amount of machinery and mate- rial across the water is a costly endeavor. “We don’t want to bid private projects unless we know the cli- ent’s financial position is good and that he will make payment at the end of the day,” he says. “In the mean- time, we are mostly bidding Inter-American and Carib- bean Development Bank funded projects.” Another new service being offered by ISD is Design- Build. Design-Build is a relatively new method of proj- ect delivery to the Bahamas in which one entity – the Design-Build team – works under a single contract with the project owner to provide design and construction services. In traditional project delivery, an owner must manage two separate contracts and can sometimes get caught between the designer and the contractor, as well as between their separate sub-consultants and sub-contractors. “It’s still a fairly new concept in the Bahamas,” admits Wilson, “and I think a lot of clients are a little bit wary having the contractor and the de- signer on the same side. And there aren’t too many companies that will undertake Design-Build here be- cause they don’t like to take the additional risk. We’ll actually take the risk; we’ll bring on the designer and we’ll work with them to make sure that we stick within their budget.” Gupta agrees that being willing to take risks is part of the company’s ethos. “We’re always looking for up- grades and trying to make ourselves better,” he states. “If we can see an opportunity, we will invest towards that opportunity.” Some of ISD’s other investments