Mad rush on mega projects: Colombo-Kandy Expressway runs into road bumps

A section of the proposed Colombo-Kandy Expressway near Pothuhera

by Rajan Philips-November 26, 2016

True, expressways are meant for speeding without interference. But you cannot speed up the building of expressways without careful planning, comprehensive environmental assessment, complete design, bill of quantities and cost estimates. Otherwise, you end up running expressways into road bumps. Not a metaphorical mix-up, but a real engineering mess-up. That seems to be the story of the Colombo-Kandy Expressway according a news story (with the map that is reproduced here) in last week’s Sunday Observer. According to this news report, a section of the proposed expressway (Section 3, 32.5 km long) between Pothuhera and Galagedera is presenting significant challenges given the terrain, and social and natural environmental conditions. These include three major rivers (Rambukkan Oya, Kudu Oya and Kospothu Oya) as well as numerous streams and irrigation channels, urban/semi-urban settlements, sparse forests, riparian vegetation, paddy fields, and coconut and other plantations. Navigating them will require the construction of 12 bridges, 17 viaducts, hundreds of culverts, dozens of over/underpasses across local roads, and three tunnels – each over 200 metres long.

Experts are questioning the fundamental need and justification for building this section of the highway, if not the entire expressway, and are raising concerns about the significant social and environmental impacts that its construction will create. But the government seems determined to go ahead with the construction of the expressway, and targeting completion by 2019. Already, it is reported, "a bidder" for the job has been selected. It would seem that the present government is insistently going ahead with the same old projects that were roundly criticized for their poor planning and massive cost overruns when they were rolled out by the Rajapaksa government. What is worse, there is no attempt to address the breakdown of professional practices in regard to planning, designing and building mega infrastructure projects. The main malaise is the political culture of prematurely delivering half-baked projects into the waiting hands of favoured investors, developers and contractors.

It is not Mahinda Rajapaksa who started this rot. The rot began after 1977, in my view, during the implementation of the accelerated Mahaweli development program, the then Prime Minister’s housing development program, and the state building of sports stadiums. One significant departure under the Rajapaksas was giving the go ahead to projects that were previously put on hold owing to feasibility, extent of impact, and cost-benefit considerations (e.g. Uma Oya), and kick-starting new projects without proper planning and without completing detailed design. The latter kick-starting approach, it wouldn’t be unfair to say, characterized almost all of the new projects. Overall, the Rajapaksa government bullishly extended the scope and geography of infrastructure projects. The extension flowed well with another Rajapaksa innovation – making corruption egalitarian! It has been said that the Rajapaksas opened the trough of public purse to everyone unlike the limited clubby approach of UNP governments.

While businesses that blatantly benefitted under the Rajapaksas were made special targets for one-time tax punishment by the present government, there is no evidence of serious effort to change the method of undertaking mega infrastructure projects. With different ministers spearheading different mega projects in different portfolios, sky would be the limit for every form of contract corruption. Corruption has already pervaded the contract process the way pollution gets in the air. Even clean handed ministers and officials would be helpless in future. Save for frequently washing their hands, they will not be able to stop dirt piling up alongside every project.

Infrastructure Experience

For over hundred years Sri Lankan institutions – the PWD, Waterworks, Irrigation, CEB, RVDB, the Mahaweli Development Authority, CECB etc., including their current successors, have cultivated engineering practices for designing and implementing infrastructure projects through construction contracts. When large scale projects were involved – especially dam and hydropower projects, these projects were undertaken usually under World Bank sponsorship involving multilateral participation of foreign agencies. In all of them the roles and functions of Owner’s Engineer, Consultants and Contractors were clearly defined and conformed to. Even when Sri Lankan state agencies were involved in projects as Engineers (e.g. CEB, RVDB, or Mahaweli Authority) and Contractors (e.g. State Engineering Corporation, or State Development Construction Corporation), the professionals working on these projects scrupulously observed the Engineer/Contractor separation in regard to technical approvals, contractual payments and additional (extra works) claims.

Lines started getting blurred under the Accelerated Mahaweli Development program when individual projects were undertaken through bilateral arrangements that included specified consultants/contractors from the donor countries. There were two unprecedented outcomes from these arrangements. The involvement of Sri Lankan professionals and firms in the Mahaweli projects after 1977 became much less than it was before. Dr Melva Perera, a leading Civil Engineering professional in the private sector at that time and a great supporter of the UNP and its 1977 victory, publicly complained about this turn of events in an op-ed page article in the Daily News.

The second outcome was the blurring of the Engineer/Contractor divide under political pressure. In one publicized instance a Sri Lankan government Minister overruled the Engineer’s recommendation rejecting a claim for additional payment by the Contractor in the Victoria Dam project, and directed payment to be made as claimed by the Contractor. Both the Engineer and the Contractor firms were reputed British companies and the project was funded by British aid. In a not publicized instance involving another Mahaweli project, the head of a Sri Lankan government consulting agency was invited to a meeting of senior most government leaders, only to find the foreign project contractor already at the meeting. In the housing and building sector, the standard brick size was changed overnight to accommodate a supplier who had by mistake produced large quantities of smaller bricks! A ‘minor variance’ might have been a better approach!

A third development was the ‘investor search’ approach that began under the BOI culture, but became government-to-government deals under the Rajapaksas. In this approach, foreign governments or investors are invited to come in, take over and deliver a project from inception to completion, operate and maintain the facility to recover costs and garner profits over an agreed upon period of time, and finally transfer the facility to the government. There is nothing wrong with this approach, provided the Sri Lankan government and its agencies know exactly what they want, can clearly define the terms of agreements, and have the institutional capacity to control their execution.

The recent mega-project experience – from the Hambantota marvels to expressway building, would seem to show a rather poor score, if not total failure, in regard to each of the three criteria I just listed. The Colombo-Kandy Expressway could be Exhibit-A for the case I am making here, although I am not the first, and will not be the last one to say this. And kudos to the Sunday Observer for breaking with the statist tradition of the past and showing independence in publishing news reports to further genuine public interest. I sincerely hope that my saying this will not put the Sunday Observer journalists in difficulty, or would cause the paper to be trashed as toilet-worthy by the land’s high and mighty.