The Union Road Transport Ministry is working on rating road-building contractors as the government plans to adopt stringent measures for the quality of national highways.
During the rating, the government plans to consider contractors' past five to eight year's financial track record and performance in the execution of works.
"The rating exercise is mainly to weed out errant contractors," said an official in the Road Transport Ministry.
The National Highway Authority of India, a nodal agency for building national highways (NHs) in the country will prepare the rating. Already the Ministry in March 2021 released standard operating procedure for the rating for 4/6 lane NHs stretches covering 343 toll plazas. This was done by the NHAI to improve its accountability towards road users, who pay user fees for use of developed NHs. This exercise was also to identify the lacunae in road construction and its management.
Recently, the Ministry had written to all the states to carry out ratings of two-lane national highways and sought details to enable performance appraisal of deployed concessionaire/contractor/maintenance agency.
The use of this highway rating exercise along with other project implementation aspects to assess the past performance of contractors is being planned by NHAI for incorporation in the assessment of the technical proposals of various firms said an official in the Road Transport Ministry.
The rating will help in setting standards for benchmarking and assessment of highway corridors in India. This exercise will also help in increasing the accountability of the stakeholders involved in the development and maintenance of NHS, said the official.
In the recently held PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan review meeting, it was also decided that newly constructed NHs stretches should be opened only after the road and safety audits.
Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari earlier said the government aims to build 60 Km of NHs per day in coming years.
In 2021-22, the pace of NH construction in the country had touched a record 37 km per day, but it slowed to 28.64 km a day due to pandemic-related disruptions. Gadkari also said that the government is aiming to expand the NHs network to 2 lakh km by 2024 from the present 1.4 lakh km.