Project Sammaan is a dynamic project with multiple deliverables at any time. Currently, the team is working on the following:

Release of tenders for construction of 27 Public Toilets: The tender documents for Public Toilets were submitted in the last week of March 2013. After that, the team worked with BMC to obtain technical sanctioning and approval from the H&UD department. However, the tenders are stuck due to delays in land approvals and differences in modalities of vendor selection between the BMC and the H&UD department; the team is working with both in an effort to fast-track the process.

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The month of July was phenomenal for both strategic planning and milestone achievement!

Among these milestones was the procurement of administrative approval from the Government of Odisha by the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation, which was routed through the Housing and Urban Development Department. The administrative approval from the government was the final authentication on the estimates of the public sanitation facilities. This also supported a step ahead in the project by initiating the tendering process. The format of the tender document has been pushed to the Engineering team for final scrutiny.

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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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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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Project Sammaan is a multi-partner, long-term, and large-scale implementation project. At any time there are at least 7 to 8 different partners working simultaneously on several milestones. Due to this, it is very crucial to plan the activities well in advance to ensure these achievements happen in a timely manner. This helps to measure the project progress tangibly and also smoothes coordination among the partners.

To ensure efficient and effective planning, the project is divided into 3 different batches:

• Batch 1 – 27 Public Toilets in Bhubaneswar
• Batch 2 – 32 Community Toilets in Cuttack
• Batch 3 – 60 Community Toilets in Bhubaneswar

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These are early days still to claim success but we may have finally managed to move the project forward through a small but extremely important milestone – the tendering of public toilets in Bhubaneshwar. The technical sanction and Public Health standing committee approvals are in place and the tender documents await the administrative sanction before they are floated on the e-tendering platform of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation.

Like I said, this is a small but extremely important milestone for the project consortium, and here’s why.

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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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