The Osmeña flyover fiasco: Who’s to blame?

The Department of Public Works and Highways is now in an uproar over the emergency repair of the Osmeña flyover crossing Gil Puyat (formerly Buendia) Avenue—a showcase project for Public Works Secretary Rogelio Singson. He promised to complete it in 120 days.

He did make the deadline—but at what cost? One month after its completion, the asphalt overlay started to peel off and the flyover looked like a moonscape dotted with potholes.

Singson quickly concluded—or his deputies told him—that the asphalt mix was substandard; and, firing from the hip, he immediately suspended the DPWH accreditation of two asphalt suppliers, Filipino Ready Mix Corp. and Pacific Concrete Products Inc. He also ordered the contractor, Tokwing Construction, to repair the flyover at its own cost.

My curiosity was aroused. How can the asphalt overlay deteriorate so quickly? I made some investigations, asking engineers and friends from the DPWH for information, and I have come to the suspicion that the culprit is not the asphalt but a syndicate within the DPWH, or at least a ranking official.

Secretary Singson’s nickname is “Babes” which is very apt as he is practically a babe in the woods that is the DPWH, with his subordinates running circles around him.

The cause of the asphalt overlay peeling off so quickly is not the quality of the ready-mix asphalt but of a new fiber matting called “Reinforced Fiber Polymer” or RFP. It is a petroleum-based, mosquito net-like fiber that is placed on top of the base material before the asphalt overlay is poured. The asphalt is supposed to bond with and strengthen the asphalt.

But the DPWH officials in charge of the project apparently did not read the warning of the RFP supplier itself, to wit: “Concrete slabs must have full contact with the base course, without allowing any movement. Relaxation of slabs is necessary. Vertical and tilt movements have to be avoided in any case.”

In other words, RFP should not have been used on the flyover because it vibrates when trucks pass over it.

It should be noted that only the asphalt on the flyover is peeling off. The asphalt on the approaches are not. It is because the approaches have no vertical or tilt movements.

It should also be noted that other highways in Region 3, where RFP was also used with asphalt mix supplied by another company, are also suffering from the same problem. Isn’t this proof that the culprit is not the asphalt mix but RFP?

Polymer fiber is a new technology in road construction, it should have been tried first as an experiment. That is why the original contract for Osmeña Highway was only for 199 square meters. The material is not yet approved for use by the DPWH; neither is it part of the DPWH Manual for Materials.

Yet for some strange reason, the 199 sq m in the original contract was expanded to 8,000 sq m without an approved variation order. Why?

This may be the answer: The price given by the supplier for the polymer fiber was only P340 per sq m, but in the DPWH contract it is P9,428 per sq m. Which means 7,800 additional sq m of fiber times P9,428 per sq m is a whopping P70 million in overprice. What a windfall for the DPWH syndicate!

The DPWH has a “Blue Book” that contains the specifications and prices of materials in DPWH projects. But RFP, being a “new technology,” is not yet listed there. That is why the 27 times overprice (from P340 per sq m to P9,428 per sq m) escaped notice.

What Singson should do is order a probe into the fiasco, with the investigators coming from independent bodies outside the DPWH, otherwise it will just end in a whitewash. The investigators should find out who was the DPWH official on top of the project. At this late date, the DPWH has not come up with the name of the official or officials who supervised the project. Who ordered or approved the additional 7,800 sq m polymer fiber for the whole of the Osmeña Highway project? Did it have the approval of Secretary Singson? Why did the price ballooned from P340 per sq m to P9,428 per sq m? Who quoted this price? Who is the superior who approved it?

Photographs of the Osmeña Highway flyover show Secretary Singson inspecting the project. Did he see the polymer fabric being laid over the concrete base of the flyover?

Did he know what it was for? Did he know it should not be used on a bridge or flyover? Did he know that it was expanded from the original 199 sq m to 8,000 sq m? Did he know that the price was increased from P340 per sq m to P9,428 sq m?

In marginal notes on two memorandums, Singson asked, “What is RFP”? In another marginal note, he asked, “What is polymer?”

It appears that the contractor, Tokwing Construction, also did not know the demerits of the RFP. When the asphalt overlay of the Osmeña Highway flyover first started to peel off, it called the asphalt supplier, Filipino Ready Mix (FRM), and asked it to put another asphalt overlay.

Seeing polymer fiber under the asphalt and knowing the warning of the RFP supplier itself, FRM pulled out of the project. Tokwing, the contractor, panicked because it had a deadline to meet. It contracted Pacific Concrete Products (PCP) to supply the asphalt mix. PCP, however was not told about the RFP overlay and the warning that it should not be used on bridges and flyovers where there is vertical movement. So PCP blindly supplied the asphalt mix at a contract price of only P10 million. The contract price of the whole Osmeña flyover repair, by the way, was only P46 million. So where did Singson get the P100-million figure he gave during a radio interview? From his subordinates, no doubt, and that price already included the P70-million overprice.