In what could possibly save a year’s delay for project approvals, road-owning agencies have pushed for scrapping a whole stage in the project-approval process. The idea was approved at the recent governing body meeting of the Unified Traffic and Transportation Infrastructure (Planning and Engineering) Centre (UTTIPEC). The body has also suggested including a ‘self-certification’ clause wherein agencies themselves can certify their engineering details and implement a project. This comes after agencies including the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), Public Works Department (PWD) and municipal corporations requested the governing body to cut down an entire stage in the approval process after it was found to be “cumbersome due to too much detail and lots of discussions with agencies, leading to inordinate delays in processing of projects”. Following this, any changes in the engineering details now would require the agencies themselves to come up with a solution instead of undergoing the entire process of approval the second time. [related-post] According to officials, so far, the process would include a road-owning agency first conceptualising a plan, getting in-principle approval from the Delhi government, appointing a consultant to conduct a field study and then submitting its proposal to the UTTIPEC. “Once submitted to the UTTIPEC, it would first go to the core group headed by the UTTIPEC director, where various options for the proposal would be analysed. It would then go to the working group, either under the secretary (PWD), special CP (traffic) or the engineering member (DDA), who would fine-tune the suggestions. The next stage would be submitting it before the governing body under the L-G who, after approving it, would inform the agency concerned. However, despite this the agency would have to prepare a detailed drawing of the project, specifying every inch of space and then send it back to the working group for approval the second time,” a senior official said. “Only after each detail was approved by the working group after deliberations would the matter be referred to the L-G again. Following approval from the L-G, the project would be given the go-ahead for agencies to begin work on,” the official said, adding that then on, each time a change was made in the detailed drawings, approval would have to be sought from the working group, delaying the process by a year. “This was starting a new practice which was in deviation from the procedure as per the approved format for submission. In addition, approval of the drawings took up a long duration. Accordingly, the original format for submission has been revised and simplified. The detailed design requirements as specified in the old format have been deleted. A self-certification clause by concerned road-owning agencies has been included, so that the agencies concerned themselves incorporate all engineering details as per prevailing standards, post approval from UTTIPEC,” the governing body observed.
