Thursday, August 05, 2010

Lack of funds not the only reason for Lae roads

By ROBIN YALAMBING

Registered Civil Engineer

Institute of Engineers of Papua New Guinea

 

Lack of   funds is not the only reason for poor construction works on the Lae roads.

The process involve in a life of a road project is as follows:

1. Inception;

2. Feasibility study - (if feasible then funding is sourced for full design and construction);

3. Detailed engineering design (feed);

4. Tendering followed by bids evaluation and contract award;

5. Mobilisation and procurement by contractor;

6. Quality assurance - supervision (and sometimes management by a different contractor or Department of Works engineers); and

7. Certification and commissioning.

 If all the above have been carefully and professionally executed, we would never have problems with sub-standard road works like we are seeing in Lae.            

All registered engineers with IEPNG are duty bound by the institution's code of ethics and perform their roles with great care and diligence.                     

Obviously, registered civil engineers were not involved in the supervision of the recently upgraded Lae roads to ensure quality assurance is achieved.                      

 I have not seen the Lae roads design myself but I believe DoW will not be foolish enough to award the design contract to an incompetent consultant to prepare the design and the tender documents, however, an investigation if carried out can tell us if the design was superior or not and whether the construction contractors did their work in accordance with all specifications stated in the design correctly and that the failure lies with the design.

 I would strongly recommend that an investigation be carried out to establish as to why the recently-constructed section of the road running along Lae Technical College failed to perform after less then 12 months which is unacceptable.

After all public money was used and someone should be held accountable.

 

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:24 AM

    Robin
    I notice that there are hardly any sub soil drains along the roads. I read some books on farm drainage dated 1860. In these they recommend sub soil drains 1.2/1.5m deep these drain for 24hrs a day, very rarely block and take no maintenance. The runoff drains for the roads are quite shallow and could be cleaned easily by machinery. These are used to remove large amounts of rain efficiently. Using subsoil drains means that the fill below the hard top will be dry and much stronger than the present badly drained system. Even our Ag colleges do not teach a drainage method embraced overseas. UK subsidises farm sub soil drainage.
    Tony Flynn

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  2. Anonymous9:34 AM

    Robin
    Further to the last and in the realms of fantasy.
    A master plan to provide subsoil drainage to at least the roads and commercial areas of Lae. Every commercial block to have its water table lowered by up to a metre.
    Tony flynn

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  3. Anonymous12:36 AM

    Tony,

    Thank you for your comments which I fully agree. AG pipes are useful and effective in draining water from within sub-soil layers and therefore are highly recommended for civil engineering applications. I have actually supervised a road pavement refurbishment work for a Freight Terminal in Sydney, Austrailia in early last year where agi pipes were used throughout the entire pavement area. All agi pipes have their discharge ends connected into manholes/junction boxes that also take in storm water run offs along the road side. Both the surface and ground water can be reasonably drained off by employing this method of construction. The road pavement as a result will maintain its structural integrity thereby serving out its full design life. This is the sort of thing we want done for all of the Lae roads given the high presence of moisture content in the sub soil layers.

    If we can effectively address the drainage issue as well as ensure that materials to be used to construct the roads are of superior quality and strength, we can come up with good serviceable roads for Lae city.

    It is also important that the capability and competency of the contractor to professionally execute the works in full compliance with all engineering specifications and standard requirements is seriously take into account when awarding of contracts for the road works.

    Robin Yalambing

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