While being liberal to contractors in the help for timely completion of road projects and covering their risk, the new model concession document (MCA) for highway building through build operate transfer (Toll) will have tough performance parameters to adhere to.
To check and reduce the number of road accidents, the contractors will be penalised if more than one accident happens in a year on a particular stretch of national highways, V Umashankar, secretary in the ministry of road transport and highways said.
Under the new MCA that will be made public soon, contractors will have to undertake crash management, and take corrective steps if more than one accident happens in a particular period on a highway stretch built by them under the BOT model.
“If more than one accident happens in a particular stretch, say 500 meters, then the contractor will face a penalty of Rs 25 lakh. Penalty will increase to Rs 50 lakh if an accident happens next year,” he added.
Umashankar said the highways ministry has identified 3,500 accident-prone areas. In the new MCA, both the cost and performance criteria will be applied before awarding contracts.
Similarly, in the other modes of highway development like hybrid annuity model (HAM) and engineering procurement construction (EPC), too, MCAs are being revised to enforce tough performance criteria on concessionaires.
In EPC and HAM projects, rating system for concessionaires is also being worked upon.
The NHAI and government already has performance data of each concessionaire for the past three years. Bad performance and rating will impact the future participation in bids for contractors.
To monitor progress in construction, the contractor will have to upload a drone video every month showing the progress in construction. The higher emphasis on quality and reliability of roads aligns with the change on approach of MoRTH. The large amount of government focus and resources is on building access control expressways. Existing projects and augmentation of capacity on the stretches already functional would also continue.
Officials feel that with the pace at which highway construction is happening, in next 15 years all major highways would have been completed. Then the main task would be their maintenance.
