‘Safety’ factor missing

This is in reaction to the Invitation to Bid published by the Department of Transportation and Communications last Jan. 2.

The country is in a construction boom, which is great for us as this reflects a healthy economic setting. The situation is also a gauge of investor confidence in the Philippines.

Indeed, in the government pipeline are several PPP (public-private partnership) projects that are about to be awarded in the next months. I am just curious: Is construction safety a part of the requirements that the prospective bidders must meet? I remember the Eton incident of a couple of years ago, where 10 construction workers died due to a failure in safety management. Many such accidents have been reported—like  the one in a power plant in Pililla, Rizal, where five workers were killed and 12 injured when the metal scaffolding they were standing on while cleaning a smokestack collapsed (February 2013). Are we going to allow more such accidents and deaths to happen? Certainly not with the PPP projects.

But the Invitation to Bid only asked for the following “qualification requirements”: (1) Legal Qualification, (2) Technical Qualification, and (3) Financial Qualification.

I did not see Safety Qualification as a major bid requirement, although there is mention of ISO 9001 certification. ISO 9001 is about quality of and workmanship in the finished product.

The invitation certainly looked like it did not give safety the level of importance it merits in government construction projects. No wonder safety is not a major concern in the field.

For our “safety confidence” in contractors to go to a higher level, I suggest that a bidder should also be required to submit for validation the following:

1. A written construction safety program/manual approved by the Bureau of Working Conditions of the Department of Labor and Employment.

2. Its safety track record for the last five years (local and international projects, if any), safety experience, projects completed, number of safe man-hours—all these validated by the DOLE for projects in the Philippines; or by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration/National Safety Council for projects in the United States; or by the labor department/ministry or pertinent agency of other countries for projects undertaken in their respective areas of jurisdiction.

3. A safety training program for all levels of workers.

4. Budget for safety, which should be separate from the direct construction cost.

5. Two ongoing local projects (to be inspected for the purpose of validating how safety is being implemented and enforced).

6. Profile of the bidder’s safety engineer/consultant, who should be required to participate in the pre-bid conferences.

We want the PPP projects to succeed not only in the sense that they are properly completed but also in terms of injuries and deaths prevented.

—VIR M. FLORENDO,

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