Civic body to use web to detect erring contractors

Contractors slipping on deadlines in completing construction work accorded by the city corporation can now easily be detected, thanks to the service provider's move to roll out a web-based project monitoring system.

As part of its IT initiatives in improving quantity and quality of services, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike has deployed the system to ensure real time monitoring of progress of work at remote construction sites, BBMP commissioner Bharat Lal Meena told PTI.

This would help provide proactive alerts by detecting any slippages early and thereby help applying mid-course correction.

The progress of work at these sites can be independently uploaded to the website by the contractor and the inspection agency stationed there, he said.

The central monitoring cell can instantly access this data from the website and take appropriate action to minimise time and cost overruns.

Real-time monitoring on a continuous basis is expected to bring in more quality consciousness among contractors, apart from simplifying logistics and significant savings in travel time and manpower deployed to monitor the work, according to T Sheshadri, IT advisor, IT department.

He said the system's greatest advantage was enabling people participate in the monitoring process in civic projects.

Those finding lacunae can upload photographs or other information of a project and alert officers concerned.

It would also put pressure on contractors to ensure high quality work since it is being constantly monitored by all stakeholders," he said.

Seshadri said relevant data and total number of ongoing projects are being uploaded on the system.

Once all data is entered, real time monitoring is expected to begin in three to four weeks. The system, installed three months ago, is expected to start delivering results soon.

Earlier, since all data was in different formats (some manually in files, others in excel format) it was difficult to have a comprehensive view or follow the progress of projects. It was difficult for the special commissioner, projects, to get required data and interpretations since they varied.

But it will now be easy to track progress of these projects and determine any problems. A timeline chart with other referrals is now possible.

The software, originally developed by the police housing corporation, has been finetuned and modified for BBMP at cost of Rs 10 lakh (Rs 1 million).

Meena said BBMP also proposes to set up an additional data centre to cater to computational and IT needs.

"Benefits would include providing highly secure, highly available, reliable, efficient and fast data access, the backbone for delivering municipal services on line and off line," he said.

Expected to be operational in three to four months, it will help provide secured and single location computational and communicational infrastructure to all e-governance applications, he added.

The project will be taken up under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission e-governance scheme so that 50 per cent of the project costs would be funded by central and state government.