Road Ministry tightens bidding norms, introduces disqualification clause for ‘catastrophic failures’ for HAM projects

During the evaluation criteria, minus 30 marks is allocated against Catastrophic Failure, which would have impacted project and quality substantially, leads to loss of lives and lasting damage to road structure requiring re-construction.

According to MoRTH, the catastrophic failures are defined as collapse of any bridge or flyover or Underpass, embankment or pavement failure causing loss of serviceability of pavement, collapse of launching girder or staging leading to loss of life during construction period, collapse inside of the tunnel or human beings trapped for more than 72 hours during construction and failure of Pavement Quality Concrete (PQC).

The Ministry has directed that modified provisions should be incorporated into all ongoing and future HAM bid documents. Along with this, bidders will now be required to submit a undertaking declaring that neither they nor any consortium member has been involved in any catastrophic failure from construction defects during the specified period.

In the last three years, major deficiencies in National Highway stretches have been reported for 67 projects. Currently in cases of damages to the highway structures, the actions such as termination of agreement, levying of penalties, debarment, blacklisting, declaring as non-performers etc. are taken against defaulting agencies.