Communication and Works Dept restructuring: Summary sent to CM for approval

LAHORE:The Communication and Works (C&W) Department has sent a summary to Punjab Chief Minister for the approval of restructuring of department, The News has learnt on Thursday.

According to summary, in order to align engineering practices of C&W Department with modern trends, an office of Chief Engineer (Special Initiatives) will be established. This new office will work as a nerve center of the department and will function on the foreign-funded projects, public private partnership projects and self-sustained schemes through revenue generation.

Additionally, there will be zero financial impact upon such restructuring and establishment of new offices of Chief Engineers (M&E) and Chief Engineer (Special Initiatives). The office of Chief Engineer Building and Chief Engineer Highways are to be abolished and replaced with two new attached departments for M&E and Special Initiative purposes. The Human Resource of existing M&R Departments will be adjusted in the newly-created departments. The surplus Human Resource shall be adjusted in the construction side. The Machinery & Equipment of M&R department shall be handed over to construction side in respective divisions. Chief Engineer M&E will provide technical inspection support to Punjab govt in public sector development schemes. Additionally, it will ensure compliance to the construction standards in the execution of the civil works. Chief Engineer M&E will notice or identify early warning sign of problems (risks) and predicts their impacts too. Chief Engineer M&E will communicate sensitive project problems, conflicts, changes and project progress to the project director and the project team as well.

The Chief Engineer (Special Initiatives) will work as a nerve centre of the C&W Department providing modern day engineering solutions with futuristic outlook in public sector. It will be responsible for planning, designing, construction and maintenance of infrastructure in the province, in line with the best international practices, to cope with the futuristic development needs.

It is pertinent to mention here that the monitoring & evaluation of the development schemes is an integral part of quality control. At present, there is no such mechanism in place which can independently evaluate the construction standards and work as a watchdog on the development schemes across the province. In the absence of a government body for evaluation and certification of construction standards of public sector projects, the government has to hire the services of third-party evaluators. Establishment of an office of Chief Engineer (M&E) will not only oversee the development schemes of the department but would also serve as Technical Support Centre to other departments in terms of monitoring, evaluation and inspection of their engineering projects. The Chief Engineer (M&E) would be exclusively mandated for technical inspection and reporting of civil works within the department and as per the requirements of ACE, NAB and other agencies.