Civic bodies have no system to check project quality

Even as projects worth R100 crore riding on its shoulders, Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon (MCG) has no quality control wing to monitor the quality of its civil construction works. Charumathi Sankaran reports.

Even as projects worth Rs 100 crore riding on its shoulders, Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon (MCG) has no quality control wing to monitor the quality of its civil construction works.

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The Haryana Urban Development Authority (Huda) also does not have a separate wing for quality control. It has to outsource the process to third-party laboratories and its vigilance wing does the necessary checks to ensure that procedures are followed.

In absence of their own facilities, both the civic bodies send samples to one Shriram Laboratories Ltd in Delhi to get the quality of civil construction and road works checked.

Asked about the necessity of such facilities, MCG chief engineer BS Singroha said that the construction works are monitored by the respective executive engineers and that the body did not have the wherewithal to dedicate a separate wing to quality control.

“The civic body gets all parameters verified by a competent laboratory (Shriram Laboratories Ltd, Delhi). It does not have enough staff to set up a quality control wing,” said Singroha.

“We had asked the former commissioner to get an independent department for quality control to ensure that the samples are fully authorised by the corporation instead of a private entity. It will help the government save money and also reduce the sampling time. It would also ensure timely payment to contractors,” said Prakash Dahiya, president, MCG Contractors’ Association.

“A separate quality control wing would ensure reliability, besides speeding up the process of testing. It would also reduce the external entity’s influence on sample testing,” said Chirag Chutani, an engineer-planner who has studied civil construction projects.