Bihar Bridge Collapses: Call to improve contract management for infrastructure projects

Bihar has always been notorious for bridge collapses.

Bridges do collapse. However, bridges are collapsing in Bihar one after another like a pack of cards – some brand-new and others still in construction stage. In hindsight, it emerges that Bihar has always been notorious for bridge collapses. Only few years ago, a new bridge on Ganga had collapsed in Bhagalpur. Heads have already started rolling in the present spate of bridge collapses. Apart from the heavy monsoon, other excuses are also emerging. There are assurances of thorough investigation as well! Most often, it is poor contract management and monitoring that leads to such bridge collapses.

Surprisingly, this is happening in a state where not long back, one IAS officer brought paradigmatic changes in the contract management for construction of roads and bridges. Reputed national companies were making a beeline for grabbing contracts in Bihar and most road and bridge projects were constructed within the project development cycle (PDC), without any time and cost escalation. Quality assurance was an additional tag! Although, such an ephemeral phase may have been the individual brilliance and commitment of one officer. In due course, it failed to proliferate as a collegiate work ethics in Bihar.

Bihar’s History of Bad Infrastructure

If Bihar has reverted to bad days in roads and bridge construction, it is not because of invented excuses like heavy monsoon but certain inherent local trends visible at an informal level in contract management of roads and bridges in the state. A major factor is sub-contracting of the mega contract to petty contractors and even politicians. Sub-contracting is allowed to some extent for inducing cost efficiency and time saving. But it is fast metamorphosing into ubiquitous norm than exception, without being factored in the main contract. Sometimes, there is an outright sale or outsourcing of contract to another party. Many sub-contractors and secondary contractors are simply fly-by-night contractors without substantive experience. Then, there are allegations of corruption and extortion-based economy. Consequently, the overall project does suffer in quantitative, qualitative and temporal aspects.

India’s Contract Management Problem

Poor execution of road and bridge contracts is not specific to Bihar alone; the trend is rather ubiquitous across India. Many states have such construction failures, albeit on a smaller scale. Hundreds of crore rupees may have been washed away every year due to premature collapse of roads and bridges. This excludes roads and bridge collapses due to natural disasters! Financial losses are just one aspect of the story. The more important aspect is the absence of conducive environmental factors for effective implementation of contractual provisions on roads and bridges or for that matter major infrastructure projects.

Reasons for Bridge Collapses

At least three major factors are visible. First, the Government and its bureaucratic structures do not have adequate domain expertise on contract management and, therefore, gets a peripheral treatment in their priorities. This despite the fact that Art 299 of the Constitution imposes all contractual obligations on these hapless officers. Poor drafting skills, failure to secure Government interests adequately and allowing many loopholes are some of the representative examples of poor contract management. This does not happen in the corporate sector where domain experts alone always handle contract management!

Second, there is hardly any institution of repute in India that attempt to bridge the knowledge gap on contract management. Some IIMs do have capsule courses for Government officers but they do not cater to day-to-day problems faced in contract management. A performance audit of these courses would reveal glaring lapses in the course curriculum (that is far away from reality), teaching methodology (that is mostly academic in nature) and faculty selection (who still harp on case studies selected decades ago without making for amends).

Third, the project monitoring committees (PMCs) are largely paper tigers, particularly in states. The PMCs are vital in keeping a regular control over the project progression. Yet, they seldom meet and when they do, they are mostly protocol-conscious with little space for free discussion. Issues like structural audit of the roads and bridges need to be done at every stage of the contract but they remain neglected. It is debatable if many technical and finance managers at ground level are exposed and sensitised to the programme evaluation and review technique (PERT) chart and follow it religiously in contract monitoring.

While the investigations into the recent collapses may take time, it seems that in most cases, bridge collapses may have taken place due to sub-standard materials. In some cases, faulty designs may have been responsible. These issues can easily be rectified through vigilant and continuous contract monitoring. Though, there is a perceptible decline in ethical approach to public finance in general and contract management in particular. We probably take contract management too casually as part of our public policy outreach. We forget that each contract involves huge amount of taxpayers’ money and yet we fail to jealously guard public interests.

Strategies to prevent future bridge collapses

We, therefore, need to explore ways and means towards better contract management for infra projects like roads and bridges. Every project failure is a test case for studying and identifying loopholes. Unfortunately, this is not done. Even successful contracts are often ignored. The proliferation benefits of good practices are, therefore, missed out. Further, we can easily secure the taxpayers’ money in risky projects by duly identifying the risk areas. There are easily available risk management technology available in the market. Insuring the roads and bridges, for example, could be an alternate model to reduce risk in contracts. But, in many contracts signed in different states, this is often ignored.

Healthy contract management is the sin qua non of a fair society and promotes economic activities including cost-effective supplies of goods and services. Premature road and bridge collapses vitiate the faith in contract management apart from delaying quality infrastructure or service. Probably, the recent shocks may induce progressive refinements in futuristic contract managements for infrastructure projects like roads and bridges.