The last month has been exceptional in terms of progress of the architectural work. The deadlines for Project Sammann have always been challenging, but this time the work was fourfold and the deadline was even tighter.

Earlier we submitted tender and good for construction drawings (GFCs) for the Public Toilets, which were six designs covering 27 sites. This time for the community toilets (CTs) in Cuttack and Bhubaneswar we had 14 designs covering 32 and 43 sites, respectively, with the same stringent deadline as with the Public Toilets. On top of that, the whole process was delayed by two weeks due to various reasons. However, Anagram took the responsibility to bring the whole project back on track.

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As we’ve written about rather extensively, Project Sammaan can be viewed as the implementation phase that builds off of insights gleaned from the year-long research study of India’s urban sanitation facilities, the “Potty Project”. Part of this study involved researching the architectural infrastructure of existing facilities to evaluate where problems were arising and what could be done to alleviate them.

One such area of exploration revolved around menstrual waste disposal and the options that were made available to women and girls. Unfortunately, we found that most facilities do not provide mechanisms for disposal of menstrual waste, nor do they provide communications interventions that foster awareness around sanitary practices regarding menstrual hygiene. As a result, many toilets are blocked by pads and towels women attempted to flush and the facility grounds are littered with used sanitary towels. In several instances, toilet booths were blocked and rendered useless due to sanitary pads being dumped in there.

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It’s that time again – to transform our architectural designs into tender documents.

Given our previous experience with the public toilet’s tender documents, we have learnt that developing a tender can be as challenging, if not much more, than the actual architectural design. Since it involves inputs from several consultants working on different elements of the design, it can lead to delays which can impact the final deadline for tender documents.

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The tendering process for all building works remains the same whether it is roads, railways, or sanitation; the simple objective is to construct the infrastructure or facilities by a contractor.

As Project Management Consultants, Arkitechno evaluates the capabilities of the contractor and then supervises the work along with quality control, check-in measurements and payment certification.

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A critical decision facing the consortium at this stage is the quality and timeliness for construction as it gets underway.

For the long term sustainability of the project, it is important that we adopt processes and protocols that are in line with existing government practices. Due to this, the project team has been working towards the tendering route wherein the government puts an open call for bids from potential contractors and selects on the basis of certain pre-determined criteria for the construction phase.

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A significant part of funds for toilet construction in Project Sammaan comes from the government. This entails following a transparent, and government-approved, selection process (a.k.a tendering) for the identification of contractors who will build the Project Sammaan toilets. The selection process should be legally tenable and will be subjected to public scrutiny. Any mishandling of this process will have serious implications on the project timelines and can put the entire project at standstill.  Thus it is incumbent on Project Sammaan to ensure that the entire tendering process is handled with care.

Having understood the importance of tendering, the team brought in professional firms to handle the entire tendering process: Feedback Foundation handled the tendering for 27 public toilets in Bhubaneswar and Arkitechno will handle the tendering for 92 community toilets in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack.

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I had a fairly informative and productive trip to Nagpur on 15th & 16th May along with various Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation officials. We joined a local Center for DEWATS Dissemination (CDD) team to visit various DEWATS (Decentralized Wastewater Treatment Systems) sites for possible inclusion in the Project Sammaan facilities.

BMC was represented by Ms Sumita Behera (Land Recovery Officer), Mr. Ratindra Narayan Mallick (Executive Engineer) and Mr. Surath Kumar Sahoo (Junior Engineer). Satchit (Regional co-ordinator) and Sekhar (Sr. Engineer) accompanied us from CDD.

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Tendering is a systematic process followed in the Municipal Corporation. Multiple interactions with different levels of Officials made me understand how exactly this process works.

The OPWD Code is like the bible for the Engineering section in the Municipal Corporation, but the way the officials apply the knowledge is amazing. Not only are they aware of the rules jotted down but also have all the points that are deviating from the standard practices at their fingertips. Using their knowledge and ours to formulate a programme was one-of-its-kind.

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The construction vendors are identified through an exhaustive tendering process managed by Feedback Foundation. The tendering process is administered by the local governments and it is supported by the project team. It is important for the project team to understand the documents that need to be submitted along with the approvals required so that the process is completed within project’s timeline.

Feedback Foundation interfaced with the BMC engineering team to obtain more details on the tendering process and to review the tender documents that had already been prepared. They also collaborated with Anagram Architects on incorporating the facility design changes suggested by the engineering team. These efforts help to ensure that the process is completed in a timely manner with all requisite approvals in place.

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The land identification process for Project Sammaan is one of the most complex and exciting processes I have participated in. The excitement comes from the challenge of meeting the deadlines within multiple constraints; the complexity comes from the task of identifying at least 160 sites within 2 months.

Visiting a community in Cuttack, Bhubaneswar.

There are multiple steps taken before selecting a site:

• A member from J-PAL, a government surveyor and a Feedback Foundation associate visit proposed sites
• J-PAL decides whether the site fits into the scope of the project while Feedback Foundation works with the land department to get land details, including ownership information. (It should be noted that only government-owned sites with clear land details will be selected.)