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Regional
Seminar Proceedings 1992
SESSION 8: ACTION PLAN
The participants were requested to identify specific
issues under the topics dealt with during the previous sessions
which ASIST should follow up on. This could be in the shape of distributing
already existing literature and experience, new research and development
projects undertaken by the Technical Enquiry Service or by consultants
engaged by the TES.
Action Plan for Maintenance
a) Cost recovery
systems for maintenance and user involvement is becoming a big
issue for the World bank.
It is necessary to look into decentralised funding
and management and possibilities of raining revenue and how road
users may be involved.
Experience in maintenance of community water
supply and irrigation systems may somehow be replicable to road
maintenance.
b) In
many labour-based programmes maintenance is receiving more and
more attention. Specific information on the lengthman system describing
the organisation, monitoring and reporting forms, payment procedures,
task rates, etc. Would be useful for projects which are at the
stage of establishing a maintenance system. It would therefore
be useful to draw upon the Kenyan experience and produce an annotated
maintenance management manual based on the Kenyan Interim Maintenance
Manual, maybe including their experience and some possible pitfalls.
The copyright issue concerning the Kenyan manual could be resolved
by ASIST. The production of such a manual could be an appropriate
assignment for a consultant.
Routine and recurrent maintenance through contractors
and other proven options could also be included.
c) Possibilities
of minimizing maintenance costs and requirements through modifying
road design standards and the maintenance organisation deserves
a study since government funding is always insufficient.
An alternative for routine maintenance in sparsely
populated areas has been covered by Roads 2000 Project. The technical
Enquiry Service can provide the conclusions from this project.
Action Plan for Contracting
a) There is a great demand for
guidelines on establishing appropriate procedures for the involvement
of private contractors on labour-based road works as well as reliable
unit rates for estimating.
The Entrepreneurship and Management Development
Branch (ENT/MAN) of the ILO has published a series of useful manuals
on training of small scale building contractors.
The tendering procedures of the African Development
Bank are not suitable for use in labour-based contracting. It
would be very useful if the ILO would create a standard system
and documentation that could be approved by the African Development
Bank.
Two guide booklet would be required:
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Appropriate contract procedures and administration,
and
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Unit rates
The guidelines should be developed for several
categories of contractors such as petty contractors, transport
contractors, routine maintenance contractors, etc.
The Institute of Civil Engineers may have useful
information in their document AConditions
of Contract@.
The guidelines on small scale contractor development
should refer to other existing documentation and how his can be
used.
The Department of Feeder Roads in Ghana has recently
updated its standard unit rates for tendering. Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar
and Norconsult have relevant material that could provide basis
information for a manual. Labour-based unit rates should be established
on a national basis since productivities can vary a great deal
from one country to another.
b) Mr Byrnes from Namibia informed
the meeting about an experimental contractor training exercise
which was arranged in the following way:
Contractors were invited to estimate for a specific
job. The contractors were then trained in estimating and asked
to produce an estimate based on unit rates provided by the ministry.
The contractor which was closest to the correct estimate won the
tender. This procedure had been tried with small scale contractors
in South Africa. It is necessary that the government regulations
allow the job not to be awarded to the lowest bid.
Mr Byrnes promised to provide more detailed information
to ASIST.
Action Plan for Compaction
It is important to get feedback on Dr Kyulule=s compaction research proposal.
ASIST staff visiting projects could provide project
experts with a questionnaire in a standard format
which asks about the performance of various types
of equipment used by the project (Type, Use, Breakdown,
Climate Conditions etc).
Information on dry compaction
should be collected. The Ministry of Works in Namibia
can provide some information.
Action Plan for Labour Standard
A copy of the proceedings will be sent to the International
Labour Standards Department in Geneva (NORMES) for their information
and comments. It was also proposed that NORMES should be requested
to (i) produce general guidelines on the application of labour standards
in technical cooperation and (ii) assist in the formulation of specific
policy guidelines on the topics which were discussed during the
session on international labour standards. It was envisaged that
this work should be done in close collaboration with the labour-based
road programmes. To begin with, this would imply that personnel
from NORMES should visit labour-based programmes and become familiar
with such programmes.
Action Plan for TES
An Action Plan needs to be written to inform ASIST
donors and collaborating ministries about the future programme of
activities of the Technical Enquiry Service. This could be presented
in the form of a brochure.
Two well done ASIST technical journals
per year, each with a separate theme, should be sufficient to alert
practitioners on the existence of Technical Service.
It was recommended that the journal would be indexed.
ASIST staff should be active in collecting and
spreading information while visiting labour-based projects. It is
also important that they discuss with the field staff what type
of information is required.
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