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Whitefield road works - 'supervision and quality assurance'
Written By silkboard - 14 July, 2009
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.
COMMENTS
Any public work planned starts with a MISTRUST
Vasanthkumar Mysoremath - 14 July, 2009 - 06:33
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
silkboard - 14 July, 2009 - 16:11
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.
Srivatsava - 14 July, 2009 - 18:48
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
Rithesh - 15 July, 2009 - 02:43
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.
Rithesh - 14 July, 2009 - 02:17
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..
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