“Any reasonable project manager knows the importance of vendor selection. You know ….. Reliable…. Effective……. Track Record….. etc.The specific detail that I am interested in mentioning is the link between vendor remuneration and their role in delivering your project on time and within budget. Usually responsibility and remuneration are directly proportional. There are however certain services which buck this trend; huge responsibility to deliver a portion of work on the critical path, yet the remuneration is not proportional to this large responsibility.An example of this type of service is the work land surveyors provide to developers. As projects grow and holding costs increase, the importance of a surveyor submitting drawings to City Council on time is critical. In my case, a land surveyor never submitted drawing to the city council and consistently lied (for some inexplicable reason) about the status of the drawings. Eventually it was revealed that he sat on the drawings for 3-months before submitting them to council. The cost of this incompetence in my case is almost R300 000 calculated at R3000 per day. Fortunately this is not capital that we have to pay, but rather lost interest on the proceeds of a pending sale – still a cost no doubt.The land surveyors remuneration was in the region of R30 000 for his role in the project. In hindsight it could have made sense to pay him double his fee to motivate him to complete the task within the shortest time possible. An extra R30 000 would only equate to the cost of 10 days delay.Not that this should have been required, but its worth noting that it was easily feasible.”