Govt develops system to monitor shoddy works

The Office of the President has developed a new system dubbed the Building Information Modelling (BIM) to monitor shoddy works in the government infrastructure projects across the country.

The Minister of State in the Office of the President (Economic Monitoring), Mr Peter Ogwang, said they were shocked by what they found on ground during their on-spot monitoring exercise.

“During my on-spot inspection in Bunyoro, Busoga, Bugisu and Sebei sub-regions, several challenges impeding service delivery were observed. These included shoddy works, delayed project implementation, and lack of standards,” Mr Ogwang said during a stakeholder consultative meeting on the possibility of the government adopting BIM to improve infrastructure development and construction projects for effective service delivery on Thursday.

During his visits, a number of district engineers were arrested over shoddy works and mismanagement of government funds.

Mr Ogwang said to address the infrastructure implementation challenges and mitigate red tapes, his ministry has proposed the adoption of BIM.

“This meeting has been organised to bring together the key players to discuss how best BIM methodology works and how best it can be adopted to address infrastructure and construction implementation challenges affecting service delivery,”  Mr Ogwang said.

“We use BIM in the management of government construction and infrastructure projects to help save the country from all risks associated with the traditional method of infrastructure design and contract management,” he added.

Mr Vincent Tumusiime, the director of the Directorate of Socio-economic Monitoring and Research, said the developed BIM is simply an intelligent 3D model-based process that gives architecture, engineering, and construction professionals an insight and tools to efficiently plan, design, construct, and manage buildings and infrastructure.

He said the system can monitor the project right from the start as the collaborative work enables the participation of all players, to access all the information and details available for all work components.

He also said the system provides a real-time data update, which allows one to integrate and change drawings and details automatically, and as and when you wish and enables integrated communication between all parties involved.

The government has always had complaints about infrastructure and construction works across the country.
In 2021, President Museveni directed the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) Engineering Brigade to take over construction works for all health facilities and schools in the country, saying many government projects were taking too long to be completed due to the lengthy procurement process and other challenges such as corruption by unscrupulous government workers.