AUTHORITY WITHOUT ABILITY, TITLES WITHOUT TRUST
Brian Ernest Regalado 
A Call to Build Better with Certainty of Success in Every Project
Authority Without Ability, Titles Without Trust:
Why Governance is Failing in Philippine Construction
In the previous article, I argued that the Philippines urgently needs a National Project Management Office — not as another bureaucracy, but as a governing backbone to bring order, discipline, and accountability to our projects.
But governance cannot succeed in a vacuum. Even the best office will fail if the industry it seeks to govern is riddled with structural weaknesses. This is the hard truth: much of our governance failure is not merely institutional, but professional and cultural. Licenses without competence, credentials without substance, organizations without accountability, and contracts without fairness — these are the fault lines that undermine every attempt at reform.
This reflection confronts those failures.
Competency Gaps
The most glaring weakness is the competency gap. Too many professionals treat CPD as a compliance requirement rather than a path to growth. Certificates pile up, but competence stagnates. We have created a culture where compliance matters more than capability.
I have sat in CPD sessions where narrow topics are recycled, year after year, merely presented by different speakers. Too often, these are anecdotal storytelling sessions rather than structured instruction that builds real skill. The result is professionals who appear qualified on paper, yet remain unprepared in practice.
True competence cannot be faked. It is not proven by certificates; it is demonstrated by results. And results flow only from integrity — because without integrity, there is no commitment; without commitment, there can be no competence.
But competence must not remain abstract. It can and must be measured through objective, competency-based assessments, validated by nationally and globally recognized credentials.
License as Permit-Signing Authority
A professional license is a necessary baseline — but over the years it has not automatically translated into relevant competence. Too often, credentials are reduced to permit-signing authority rather than evidence of ability. Architects and engineers continue to fight over who should be the professional of record in building permits. But this is not a debate about who can deliver; it is a debate about who can sign.
The same flaw runs through government appointments. Too many DPWH district engineers are political appointees, elevated not on a record of technical excellence but on political ties. In the private sector, contractors sustain their licenses by designating Sustaining Technical Employees (STEs).
On paper, there are over 19,000 STEs. Yet PCAB rules reveal the weakness: competence is measured only in years of experience and role capacity, capped at thirty years. There are no performance KPIs, no quality metrics, no measurable outcomes. Category evaluation is based on credit points tied to time and role, not results.
This is why contractors qualify on paper while failing in practice. The system rewards authority without ability — authority granted by signatures, politics, or years on paper, not by competence or integrity. Worse still, STEs are not required to hold internationally aligned certifications such as the ISO 17024:2012 Certificate in Project Management, nor even the government’s own Enhanced Construction Managers Training and Certification Program (ECOMTCP). If STEs are to be the technical backbone of licensed contractors, shouldn’t they at least meet this baseline?
Until licensing and credentialing shift from paper qualifications to objective, measurable standards rooted in integrity, we will continue to produce professionals and firms who qualify in documents but fail in practice.
Organizations That Serve Themselves
Our integrated and accredited professional organizations, operating under the authority of the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC), should be the compass of the industry — guiding professionals toward competence, unity, and accountability. Too often, however, they fall into the trap of being self-serving. I have seen leaders pursue positions not to serve, but to advance entrepreneurial or political agendas.
The result is fragmentation. These organizations march to their own drumbeats, rather than aligning with the industry’s greater needs. Instead of pulling the profession together, they add to its division. An industry without unity cannot hope to reach its goals.
As quasi-public institutions, they carry a responsibility far greater than ordinary associations. Their leaders should not only answer to their members but must also be aligned with the objectives of the industry and its regulators. Their election or appointment cannot be reduced to popularity contests or controlled by entrenched political machinery. Otherwise, members remain dependent on the favor of national officers for chapter support, and organizations become captive to internal politics rather than accountable to the public they are mandated to serve.
And because they hold this quasi-public role, these organizations must also model transparency and accountability. They must show, in practice, how governance, decision-making, and resource allocation should work — openly, fairly, and in the interest of the industry. Moreover, they must never allow anyone to serve in a position where there are clear conflicts of interest. An organization cannot credibly demand accountability from the industry if its own leadership is compromised.
Policy, too, must rise above the superficial. It should not be limited to slogans, acronyms, or clever alliterations designed to sound impressive in presentations. These may look attractive at conferences or in slide decks, but they are ultimately shallow and often prove limiting in direction, form, and substance.
What the industry truly needs are policies rooted in clarity, substance, and measurable outcomes — policies that do not merely brand but genuinely build. Until leadership and policy in these professional organizations are tied to competence, integrity, transparency, accountability, and freedom from conflicts of interest, they will remain part of the problem rather than the leaders of reform.
The Contracting Trap
The industry is also trapped by its bias toward lump sum contracting, reinforced by the standard forms of contract that dominate practice. Lump sum is not wrong in itself, but when it becomes the default model — and when transparency and clarity are found lacking, when fairness is absent, and when best value and true value-based competition are set aside — it becomes a trap.
It encourages cutting corners, limits transparency, and shifts risks unfairly. The consequences are predictable: disputes, ghost projects, and failed delivery. Some projects collapse not in extraordinary disasters, but in ordinary use. Flood control structures crumble under normal rains. Bridges inaugurated with ceremony fail within weeks under typical loads.
These are not acts of nature; these are failures of governance, competence, and integrity.
Industry Alignment
We cannot afford an industry that remains fragmented. Architects pursue their own programs, engineers chart their own directions, and professional organizations prioritize their internal affairs over collective progress.
DTI–CIAP must demand not only policy alignment but also alignment in actual direction. Professional organizations may continue their social events and membership activities — though sadly, many remain more social than truly industry-building. But in matters of competency development, credentialing, benchmarking, governance, and industry-wide initiatives, there must be unity.
Without alignment, every effort becomes diluted. Training does not translate into capacity. Credentials do not equate to competence. Benchmarks fail to ensure readiness. Codes of practice remain inconsistently applied. Fragmentation is more than inefficiency — it is destructive.
Alignment is not about erasing identity or autonomy. It is about ensuring that all players converge toward a common goal: enabling project success.
And this requires collective governance — governing boards that are connected across the industry, yet free from conflicts of interest. Especially at the national and industry level, boards must not be dominated solely by contractors or by professionals. They must be a balanced representation of the entire industry — owners, regulators, professionals, contractors, and workers alike — to ensure that policies do not favor specific groups but serve the good of the whole.
Only when the industry moves as one, under a framework of collective governance, can we claim to build better with certainty of success in every project.
Looking Ahead
These failures explain why governance collapses even when policies look good on paper. Unless competence, credentialing, organizations, and contracts are reformed, no national office can succeed. But acknowledging the problem is not enough. We must also build the solution.
That solution — a structured, competency-based, integrity-driven framework — is what I will explore in the next article: Adopting the Spheres of Competence in Construction Project Management Practice.