New Delhi [India], August 19 (ANI): The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways will review existing provisions governing subcontracting of highway works and is also moving towards performance-based assessment of consultants preparing Detailed Project Reports (DPRs), Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Wednesday.
Addressing the 4th edition of FICCI’s Tunnels and Bridges Conference, Gadkari said the review would seek to ensure that contractual requirements are followed and responsibility for the quality and timely execution of projects remains clearly with the principal contractor.
He said the ministry was already assessing contractors based on their performance and had begun extending the exercise to DPR consultants. Tender eligibility for such consultants is proposed to be linked to their performance assessments.
“Quality is the first priority, and cost comes after quality,” Gadkari said.
He also raised concerns over instances where contracts were awarded substantially below the estimated cost and were subsequently subcontracted through multiple layers, with each intermediary retaining a margin.
Gadkari said Goods and Services Tax (GST) records could help trace such subcontracting chains and identify cases where contractual requirements may have been breached.
He further added that the ministry is preparing tunnel tenders worth Rs 2 lakh crore to Rs 2.5 lakh crore, and urged the industry to take the lead in domestic manufacturing of tunnel boring machines, whose capital cost he identified as a major constraint.
He also called for a technical session on ultra-high performance concrete.
At the conference, FICCI Committee on Roads & Highways Chair and Afcons Infrastructure Managing Director S Paramasivan raised concerns over the widespread use of the lowest-bid, or L1, method for awarding infrastructure contracts.
He said tenders were being awarded 20 per cent or more below estimated costs, putting commercial viability and execution quality under pressure.
Paramasivan said quality-cum-cost based selection provisions already exist with the Finance Ministry and MoRTH but are not being used widely. He urged that the method be adopted as the preferred approach for complex projects and those valued above Rs 1,000 crore, with technical parameters accounting for 70-80 per cent of the evaluation.
He also called for land acquisition and clearances to be handled by project authorities rather than contractors under EPC contracts, and sought provisions to compensate for verified geological variations in Himalayan tunnelling projects.
Paramasivan further urged a reconsideration of the June 2024 procurement guidelines that direct disputes above Rs 10 crore towards mediation, arguing that institutional arbitration with time-bound procedures would be preferable to prolonged court proceedings. (ANI)
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