TABUK CITY, Kalinga – The province’s Bids and Awards Committee (BAC), Local Finance Committee, and the Provincial Project Monitoring Committee (PPMC) have come up with policy recommendations to ensure efficient project implementation and to correct irregularities.
Among the recommendations during the forum of the three committees with contractors and engineers is for the parties involved in the project to do their assigned jobs and discharge judiciously their responsibilities, especially in the implementation guidelines and standards.
The forum was prompted by findings on 129 projects of the provincial government worth P45.4 million implemented from 2017 to 2020, which, according to Provincial Planning and Development Coordinator Flor Moldero, were served with audit observation memorandums and 79 projects requested for validation by the Commission on Audit.
As reported by the PPMC, guidelines stipulated in respective project contracts were allegedly violated causing delays in project implementation or irregularities such as questionable quality of projects, discovery of “ghost” projects, and some projects are constructed in private lots.
As most projects were completed beyond the contracted number of days, the group agreed that contractors should apply for suspension immediately in case of delays with valid reasons and the contractor, not the sub-contractor, should take full responsibility on the inadequacy of equipment and manpower.
They recommended for the termination of projects that exceeded a negative slippage of 15 percent.
On the issue that many contracts are awarded to one contractor who then passes the job to sub-contractors, contractors were reminded to monitor the implementation of their projects.
The BAC was asked to require the Constructors Performance Evaluation System result as one of the requirements for bidders and the BAC Technical Working Group to implement strictly post evaluation of contractors.
The body also reiterated to the Provincial Engineering Office to closely supervise the implementation of projects from pre-implementation stage to construction phase until completion.
The PEO was tasked to assign a project engineer per municipal cluster and validate projects together with the contractor.
On some projects that were requested for inspection but no accomplishment yet, the group agreed that there must be a sanction for people involved, including the contractor.
The project engineer is tasked to determine actual accomplishments before the inspection to avoid collusion.
Payment of projects should be based on actual percentage of accomplishment and a punch list on those that recorded less than 100 percent accomplishment must be done.
Projects with alteration should not be paid. Per Commission on Audit ruling, variation should not exceed 10 percent, and allowed only in extreme need.
Contractors must request a change order from the project engineer before implementation.
To discourage piecemeal allocation of projects, the group considered a ceiling of P500,000 to P1M as the minimum project cost for 2022.
Only priorities endorsed by the Municipal Development Council will be the basis for projects to be included in the Annual Investment Plan of the province and no more individual listing per official.
The group also recommended awarding contractors who complete their projects earlier than the target completion of their work. – Peter A. Balocnit
