A technical project report for civil works for upgrading Mpigi Kanoni Road from gravel to bituminous standard (64KM)

Abstract

This project report contains details of the Civil Works for Upgrading of Mpigi-Kanoni Road from Gravel (Unpaved) to Bituminous (Paved) Standard (64Km) from start to practical completion, in which the author of this report participated as a Project Manager on the Contractor’s team. The project was under the National Roads Development and Maintenance Program. The employer who also was the sole funder of this project was the Government of Uganda through its agency Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) and the main contractor was Energoprojekt-Niskogradnja AD. The project was initially envisaged to be an Asphalt Concrete AC 14 standard road, but it was later agreed between the client and the contractor during contract negotiations that it should be of Double Bituminous Surface Treatment standard because the traffic volumes were not high enough to warrant the use of AC14. The project had an achieved cost Ugx.141,279,484,632.37 which cost was 14.15% higher than the cost at contract signing, Ugx. 123,770,604,739, which was as a result of increase in volume of works. The project implementation period was 54 months up from the estimated 36 months at contract signing. This time extension was as a result of factors including but not limited to: delay in land acquisition; inclement weather; delay in design review; delay in issuing site instruction to the contractor; and change of the scope of works by the client as discussed in the body of this report. The major activities and methodology adopted on the project right from the award of the contract, to the Defects Liability Period (DLP), and it expressly details construction works and contract administration procedures undertaken during project execution including aspects of safety and health are detailed in this report. Some of the challenges encountered during the execution included failure to effect interim payments on time which the contractor managed to handle by use of financial facilities such as bank loans and by charging interest on delayed payments. Also there was a change in the supervising consultant, UNRA Construction and Supervision team taking over from AECOM RoA (Pty) Ltd in association with ICD mid way the project execution phase and this posed a challenge in communication and management. There was need to establish new relationships between the contractor and supervising consultant. This report details the lessons learnt during project execution and the author gives conclusions and recommendations on how to manage such projects in future.