An anti-corruption roadmap for construction

IRIS GONZALES

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As we find ourselves deep down the rabbit hole in this flood control mess, we're seeing how rotten corruption is in the implementation of infrastructure projects.

What happens now, we might ask ourselves, for surely it cannot be business as usual?

I reiterate that the only acceptable outcome of this jaw-dropping thievery is to really bring the perpetrators to justice. We cannot allow such insatiable greed of this mafia of unscrupulous individuals to continue governing our lives.

Moving forward, local construction players have proposed an anti-corruption roadmap.

I am sharing parts of it here, hopefully to guide the Marcos administration, the industry and the Independent Commission for Infrastructure in creating a better environment for public works and the construction industry in general.

There's a long list of strategies and steps in this proposal, which hopefully may help solve corruption in government projects.

The Philippine Domestic Construction Board (PDCB), chaired by Liberito Espiritu who is also chairman and founder of Datem, came up with its so-called unified anti-corruption strategy for the construction industry.

Four key measures

PDCB, one of the implementing boards of the Construction Industry Authority of the Philippines (CIAP), listed four major elements of the strategy:

First is to institutionalize the practice of quantity surveying in government infrastructure projects, recognizing its importance in budget and design economics, the standard method of measurement for uniform bidding, tender scrutiny, valuation of variation orders, contract implementation and project financial reporting.