The Ministry of Works had identified that it had a shortage of the engineering and drafting staff to undertake the large amount of power station construction that the government had committed to in the North and South islands. Fritz Langbein believed that provided 1,000 workers could be obtained from overseas then the MOW would be able to complete the entire project in-house by 1954. In May 1949 the government reluctantly accepted that overseas contractors may have to be employed to meet the planned construction programme. This admission lead to an unsolicited bid being received from a British consortium consisting of civil engineering contractors Richard Costain, electrical manufacturers and contractor English Electric and Insulated Callender Cables to design and build the Roxburgh and other New Zealand power stations. The Ministry of Works had reservations about the lack of a guaranteed completion date, difficulties with divided responsibility if the consortium undertook both the design and construction, the potential for the cost to be higher than if competitive tenders were called and that it could give the consortium a monopoly over future projects of a similar nature. The State Hydro-Electric Department didn't want to be restricted to one electrical equipment manufacturer and also saw the offer as a threat to their transmission line construction staff. Taking these concerns into account and wishing to avoid using up precious overseas funds the offer was formally rejected in September 1949 by the Minister of Finance in the Labour government.