Professional consultant or con-sultan?

Newbies normally really have no confidence at all with the BH consultants. We have no law or any professional body whatsoever to monitor and hold them responsible when thing goes wrong & when thing turns sour. The terms & conditions drafted in the quotation is very ambiguous & interpretation could be much to the favour of the consultant side and there is no standard agreement being used yet (not like real estate sales and purchase agreement {S & P} and standard form of contract recognised by PAM/JKR/FIDIC, being used in the construction industry).

We are easily subject to the risk of being con and taken for a ride to Holland by the "kham sal tant" (cantonese) or "raja palsu" (Malay/Indonesia), if we do not familiarize ourselves with all the tricks before venturing out into this swiftlet BH business.

Sometimes I like to relate and compare the swiftlet farming business with the real property development, and I find that most of the time when shit hit the fan (like BH being demolished, fail BH no BN, complaints for noise, etc), always the BH owners are at the losing end, and the consultant seems like sitting there doing nothing & can't help much. I am not blaming the consultant per se, (and I understand some BH is DIY) coz I know that they are not really the so-called "consultant" that registered under a certain professional body, not like the construction industry where the consulting engineer has to register to BEM, (similar goes to architect register to PAM) to ensure their competency and so that they can be held responsible when thing goes wrong like building collapse, substandard design & construction, etc).

In fact, strictly speaking, IMO, swiftlet consultant should not be called "consultant", they can only be called contractor, more specifically: a "turnkey contractor*". Reason? Very simple, do u think any Tom, Dick, Harry, Ah Chong, Ahmad or Ramasamy can be a consultant that can design, draw a high rise building? No, right? But, a contractor (like Phua Choo Kang from Singapore) can undertake to "sub" to construct a building under the supervision of a professional consultant. Most of the contractor who undertakes to do big job, need to register to CIDB & PKK. Some plumbers even also need to register to JKR/PBA/JPP. What about our BH consultant? None, so far, correct me if I am wrong. (The BH consultant’s fee is very much higher than the architect, where they only command a 2-3% percent of the contract amount, & building contractor generally 20-30%)

(* In construction industry, a turnkey contractor is a contractor who involves in design and build, they will handover the final product to the client during the completion time, the turnkey contractor is solely responsible on everything(where they have to employ design consultant and specialist in construction if need to and the sub-cons to implement the works, except on the financial aspect which will be taken care of by the client)

What I am trying to say is that what we want for this industry is a qualified professional consultant (PC). That is. We want PC that can coordinate on the design, construction, liaise with the local authorities or other external government departments, educate the client, undertake the operation & maintenance (O & M) during defects and liability period (sadly to say, until now there is no law or regulations cover on this), whereas in building construction we have 24 months of liability period and the client could hold retention money and choose not to release if found not satisfactory.

We want our consultant to be more responsible (no play play, no ding dong) and really mean business, we want law that could bind them if the BH fail or the BH cause complaints to public and where we can sue them, penalise or ban them from this business. Of course at the end of the day, we have to pay a high price in exchange for their service, which I feel is worth it, for all the compliance, we can be rest assured and sleep well for our investment (our sweat and hard-earned money).

However, this is only my wishful thinking. There is still a long way to go coz for the time being, we don’t have the luxury & resources to have all this implemented.

Once again, like to say that this is just my humble 2 cents. Not intended to hurt anybody. My apology if any.