Bicol’s roads: Build to last or doomed to fail?

By Wenfredo A. Firme

Infrastructure plays a crucial role in regional development, enabling economic growth, efficient transportation, and accessibility to essential services. However, in the Bicol Region, roads often suffer from early deterioration, leading to increased maintenance costs, transportation inefficiencies, and safety concerns. Despite substantial investments in road construction and rehabilitation, many highways and secondary roads show signs of wear and damage much sooner than expected. This raises critical questions about construction quality, maintenance practices, and environmental factors that contribute to their rapid decline. Understanding the reasons behind this issue is essential to improving road durability and ensuring sustainable infrastructure development in the region.

EARLY DETERIORATION OF ROADS

For whatever it is worth I wish to share my observations regarding the very early deterioration of the roads.

1.Poor Quality of Road Construction - Already Normal Practice

It has been observed that most of the roads, particularly portions of the Andaya highway from Naga to Quezon Province have to be repaired or replaced every two or three years. After long rainy seasons the roads are full of potholes, cracks, sunken water ponding and other defects that are causing so much inconvenience to the riding public and advance deterioration of vehicles. It appears that these very frequent replacements and/or repairs have become the normal trend. This is not normal and it should be stopped not only to relieve the commuting public of the ordeal suffered in using these deteriorated roads but also to save on cost.

2. Roads are Constructed at the Costs so Much Less than the Allocated Budget

Road designs and construction techniques are no longer secrets to local engineers and contractors. The amounts that the government allocates for road projects are determined based on sound engineering design and based on acceptable standard quality of construction. If these roads were designed and constructed according to the allocated budgets they would not deteriorate so early. It is obvious that the quality of construction is so poor so that the cost must have been so much less, about 30% to 40% less than the allocated budget.

3. Designers and Contractors Are not Held Accountable for the Early Deterioration of the Roads

Designers and contractors are supposed to guarantee their works. These so many cases of early deterioration are clear indications either of faulty design or sub-standard quality of construction. It is the responsibility of DPWH to conduct investigation to determine the real cause or causes of the untimely deterioration. Should it turn out that the cause is faulty and/or inadequate design then the designer should be held accountable. In the same way the contractor should be held accountable if early deterioration was caused by poor and sub-standard workmanship. Surely these cases of untimely deteriorations must have been due to faulty and/or inadequate design or sub-standard quality of construction that the professionals should be held accountable. But DPWH does not impose liabilities against these erring designers and contractors.

4. DPWH Finds Justifiable Causes for the Early Deteriorations

The non-imposition of liabilities on the designers and contractors is an indication that DPWH condones their defective design or sub-standard quality of construction. The agency even identify the causes to justify the early deterioration.

5. The Designers Determine the Life Expectancy of the Roads

DPWH argues that the main factors causing the early deterioration of the roads are: a) continuous heavy rain, b) large volume of traffic, and c) excessive heavy truck loads. It is true that these factors occur, but they are not the main reason for the early deterioration. Proper design and sound construction methods can easily address these causes. DPWH Highway engineers are very well trained and qualified to design roads. All these causes are known and can easily be addressed in the design.

a) Continuous Heavy Rain – Rains in the Philippines are perennial and are therefore predictable and expected always to occur. The deterrent effects of rains can easily be addressed. Proper design of drainage, shoulder and slope protection will definitely mitigate the ill effects of continuous heavy rain. These features are supposed to be included in the design but very often not included in the completed road works.

b) Large Volume of Traffic and Excessive Heavy Truck Load – DPWH regularly conducts traffic studies to determine the trend in the increase of traffic volumes and loads. The data generated in these studies are supposed to provide adequate information for the designers to be able to design the roads that would be able to sustain or handle future traffic volumes and loads. The design is expected to determine and provide specifications of the following: a) quality of the materials to be used, b) quality of the sub-base, c) thickness of the pavement, d) the strength of the concrete, e) the type of drainage, f) type/kind of protection needed and other parameters that determine the quality of the road structure.

These specifications determine the quality of construction and subsequently the life expectancy of the road. They may vary depending on how long the road would last as intended by the designer. The designer is really the one who determines the life of the road.

6. Quality of Workmanship in Construction Also Determines the Life of the Road

Adherence to the specifications during construction will preserve the design intent of the designer. The contractors control the quality of materials and workmanship in accordance with the design specifications. It is therefore obvious that the designers and the contractors are the ones who determine the life expectancy of the road. The short life is intentionally set so that within two or three years the roads deteriorate and are ready for repair or replacement.

7. These Roads are Intentionally Designed and Constructed to Last Only for Two to Three Years, Why?

a) To Ensure that Local Contractors Have Continuous Contracts - Local Road contractors have invested so much on equipment, train and maintain manpower specifically for road construction. If these roads were designed and constructed to last for ten to fifteen years, then these contractors would be idle and without contracts for a long time. They would soon give up being contractors. To ensure that they have continuous contracts there should be deteriorated roads to repair or replace.

b) To Ensure Saving - Construction of inferior quality of roads definitely costs less than the allocated budget. Only DPWH, the designers and the contractors know where the 30% to 40% savings are invested.

8. The Quality of Foreign Funded Roads vs Those Constructed by Local Contractors and Supervised by DPWH - It is obvious that the quality of foreign funded roads is very much higher than those locally funded and supervised by DPWH. This is because the funding institutions hire foreign consultants to ensure that adequate funding is allocated and fully spent. The presence of the foreign consultants also ensures that contractors, both foreign and local are complying with their contractual obligations and ensure acceptable quality of construction.