Construction firms form body to improve road design

By vision reporter

A consultants’ forum made up of road construction and engineers firms has been formed to improve road designs and efficient delivery of services in the road sector.

“Everyone is complaining about the poor road network in the country and contractors’ failure to complete road construction in time. This has given construction firms a bad image and therefore, we need to improve the performance in the road sector,” Frederick Lwanga the director and head of engineering at Kagga and Partners said.

Lwanga made remarks during a meeting of engineers and road construction firms at Protea Hotel in Kampala recently.

Lwanga said the forum will address issues such as sub standard road designs by contractors, poor supervision which leads to shoddy work, delayed payment and failure of completion of the road projects in time.

He said the bottlenecks the road industry is faced with will be tackled by creating a platform for regular dialogue between construction firms, contractors and key actors.

He emphasised the need for information and knowledge sharing among the road construction firms and a knowledge bank would be established in order to help the young firms.

Lwanga noted that some firms were still using hydro analysis factor, a system used in the 1960s, in road design leading to sub-standard work.

“We need to use the latest technology,” he said.

He said the forum will help to find a solution to some of Kampala’s challenges such as the lack of street lights.

The forum will be coordinated by Uganda Association of Consulting Engineers (UACE) and funded by Creating Opportunities for Sustainable Spending on Roads (CrossRoads).

It will also train graduate engineers.

Alex Mugova, the market systems development specialist of CrossRoads emphasised the need to build capacity for construction firms.

“We need to build an efficient roads sector by developing skills and capacity among contractors,” Mugova said.

He said CrossRoads has staked 18 million pounds (about sh70b) to improve the quality of the country’s road network.