Suhas, Rithesh, Clive, others - you may have noticed a BBMP tender today that is calling out for "Consultancy services for Project Management including supervision and quality assurance for the project ... asphalting work ..mentioned below".
And the work mentioned is "asphalting whitefield road from KR Pura hanging bridge to Hope Farm junction via Hoody junction".
Work is estimated at 100 lakhs "for each work". Don't know if the full 8 km stretch of road work is one "work" or multiple, but leave that part out.
How about we latch on to this "quality assurance" work, find out who eventually gets this work awarded, and track what "quality" they assure? We can double check if this consultant follows Indian Road Congress (IRC) standards or not, and whether they care for the "full picture", as in , a road includes marking, signage, and pavements, not just the tar.
I have tried this earlier for Mahadevapura area, but fell short of helping hands (can search old posts). But lets try again.
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Lets do it
Bloody hell... 100L for supervision and quality assurance (that too for "each job")... I wonder what is the qualifying criteria for bidding.. Lets start Praja Consultancy and bid for this :)
OK - Until then.. we will do our job as public auditors.
Shouldn't the QA and project management people be selected before the project actually begins, i though generally people plan first and then execute projects.. well this is BBMP - may be they do it differently..
Any public work planned starts with a MISTRUST
Because, invariably the official empowered authorities have high level doubts about their own ability to ensure successful planning, operation and implementation process; so they start most of the projects with a 'MISTRUST'.
- Second, they are not sure whether they can ensure proper transparency and accountability in O&M, QA, financial propriety, prudent spending, ensuring strict performance of tenders and processes, resorting to splitting of one whole work into bits and pieces to spend moneys within the limits of sanctioning authority and other parameters associated with award of contracts and execution of works.
- Third, better not to discuss about the credibility aspect of executing such works.
ESCAPE ROUTE:
Use corporate methodologies and engage Consultancy services for Project Management including supervision and quality assurance for the project ... so that project finance can be split and spent not for actual works but for assuring quality that does not exist.
- Bane of our system is - it is full of holes and loopholes; hoodwinking public through hi-decible jargons, if necessary, include names of world class players somewhere in between to impress, though not relevant and get away with no transparency and no accountability whatsoever.
- Citizens should engage themselves in meaningful interaction with officials, when it comes to the question of what they want and how to get them because it is their money, their street, their city. Therefore, they have every right to demand the infrastructure and services they need because their tax money has to be used for their welfare.
See: http://praja.in/discuss/forums/2009/04/success-story-a-street-committee-mysore Impacts are also noted thereunder.
- Otherwise, the authorities will cook and serve something not according to your menu but according to their taste that has no salt and pepper, while they manage to get their bread, butter and jam in the process.
- Day light robbery with clever official due diligence to hoodwink public who do not care about participatory democracy.
- Yatha praja, thatha raja - It is never too late. Whether quality assurance consultancy exists or not, people should get down to the streets when such works are taken, with the stick of RTI in their hand, ensure quality assurance..
- Vasanthkumar Mysoremath
Rithesh, ignore the amount etc
Ignore the amount, and possibility of corruption etc. Lets just do it this time man - assume that 80L out of 100L goes towards work on thr ground (20% to corruption etc). Now, what exactly does this 80L produce? How does the project certification or nod of quality.
As always, hoping for more support or show of hands. But this doesn't require more than 2-3 people - few meetings, and RTIs would be enough. And a street event with IRC manuals in hand would be a nice way to top it off.
Seen them in the past too....
SB,
I have seen a few such tenders in the past too. There were a series of these tenders on a single page of ToI for Hosur Road signal free project. I saw atrocious sums of 7-9 crores for the project management/consultants tenders for those magic box projects on Hosur Road and Hosur-Laskar Roads. I am very sure that the amount is the cost of the project and not just for project management.
Btw, really interested to know where you saw the tenders..
-Srivatsava V
-Srivatsava V
Lets meetup on this
Are u going to the CiSTP meet on Saturday? If so we could talk about this after the meeting. I saw Srivatsava post on that thread confirming that he will be attending the meet.
Quality assurance on roads
This seems to be a new trend. The QA is "outsourced" presumably to reduce corruption of the contractors working hand-in-glove with BDA/BBMP engineers. I had a discussion once with BDA engineers in which they did talk about consultants doing the QA.
As SB rightly pointed out, the "Fix" seems to be a bigger problem than the problem itself. As about we doing a Q&A, problem is the tendering is very civil engineering heavy. How much bitumen, curing, loading etc etc, which I am clueless. Unfortunately, as I have been stating for long, the geometric design is completely ignored - we need to get that in too.
Probably a good case for RTI.
Suhas
tenders etc
Srivatsava - I read papers mostly for tenders. What reporters write tells you one story, and tenders tell you another. rich space for tenders is why I read TOI. Hate the fact that Hindu carries tenders mostly from Tamil Nadu - they don't realize that some people are looking for news in those things as well.
Rithesh - I am out of town on the CISTUP meeting day.
Will call you tomorrow to plan this work. As I said, lets not go after corruption etc, or question the motives behin why QA work is tendered separately (Suhas mention the reason, and it makes sense).
Let us just find out what exaftly is done as part of QA - what standards do they follow, and who on the BBMP side signs off on the work that the QA consultants do. Who is held liable for any issues after completion date - the builder/contractor, or the QA cosultant?
Lot of work already happening
SB - if we plan to do something lets do it soon. Work has already started and is being done in bits and pieces. In some stretches, the roads are already tarred.
Update
No Surprises - The road work is shabby!
I'm cringing at being naive to even think the newly laid road from Hope Farm to KR Puram was a world class one, today I noticed that a little ahead of the Hotel Zuri (coming from ITPL) there is a road hump and right after it is a huge puddle caused by a crater of a pot hole - Believe you me, that it has not even been two months since it was repaired and this road is already showing signs of trouble!
I recall that this repair work was going to be monitored by a Quality Assurance firm doing the same independently, what ever happened?
Alternatively a small potion at hodi village was never repaired? At several places the recent rain has thrown up "wet areas" these trouble spots clearly are prone to become full fledged pot holes.
This is just a view and observation from my end should anyone want to take this up with the authorities it would be excellent.
Need Holistic View on Infrastructure
Friends,
Actually one needs to approach the entire infrastructure development in a holistic manner. Storm Water Drains, bad Roads and rainfall / flooding management has all to be tackled in conjunction with each other.
Stangnent water on roads either because they are not ecologically constructed or because there is overflow / flooding from storm water drains leads to hydrostatic pressure in crevices formed beneath the road surface. These invariably lead to pot hole creation with change in daytime temperature and sharp fall in night temperatures adding to this phenomina.
Ecologically sustainable roads which are smooth as silk and which last for years together can easily be constructed, but someone in authority must be willing to listen! How did small countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand produce world class infrastructure at least in all their metropolitan cities? They institutionalised corruption and then went about offering the construction job to the best companies of the world.
Wonder if Government in India would ever dare to institutionalise corruption and seek to promote best technologies instead of blindly supporting inept local providers of technologies?
A road building contractor once told me he is forced to pay a substantial bribe to get the contract .Simultaneously he is also being forced to charge minimum amount for obtaining the contract itself. This is because he wont get the contract in the first place as the tendering process is purely based on the dreaded L1 concept (lowest quote with no credence being paid to technology or quality being offered!). Consequently he has no option but to short change on material being used. Any spot checking the Engineers pretend to do is "taken care of" by resorting to further corrupt practices!
I am afraid today (Mahatma Gandhi's birthday alas!) has ended up my being so pessimistic about the Indian scenario. I hope others are more optimistic.
Best wishes,
Chari
RKC
My city never fails me : )
Hello Folks,
I just got back from a business trip and actually looked forward to driving to work, when I left the new road was just laid from the new Shell Gas station to hope farm....well the city's civic bodies as usual had a treat for me....there has been some KPTCL work alongside some pavement/sidewalk work that messed up the entire stretch...i mean though work has been on the sidewalk the earth has been dug up and thrown on the new road, the rain and traffic have worked together to grind the earth into the asphalt and even when the mud has been cleared up one can see an exposed weakness in the asphalt and pot holes waiting to happen...the pot hole near the ZURI that I brought up in an earlier comment is now a full blown ditch...3 months down the line and you have a mult-crore road that needs repairs - arrrrg!
QA was to be done on this infrastructure project - what ever happend..i am a frustrated, sad and disaapointed citizen right now...pictures/photos to follow www.flickr.com/photos/44876414@N02/