Road Pavements Forum

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Road Pavements Forum Twelfth meeting CSIR
Conference Centre, Pretoria 7 November
2006 Towards national specifications for road
works
Ron Watermeyer and Rodney Milford
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• Basis of engineering practice (tools)
• Based on a body of discipline specific knowledge
  captured primarily in
• codes of practice (guidance documents)
• technical standards and technical papers, and
• literature and publications.
• Cover five basic areas, namely
• planning
• design
• construction, installation or manufacture
• repair and maintenance
• deconstruction

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• Engineering practices need to be updated
  constantly so that the construction industry
• continues to service the changing needs of
  society
• addresses the environmental constraints to
  development and
• remains globally competitive.

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• Current status
• Based to a large extent on work done in the 1980s
  when SA was isolated from the rest of the world
• National Building Regulations
• SABS 1200
• COLTO
• TRH

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• What is a standard?
• A level of quality or attainment
• Something used as a measure for comparative
  evaluations
• WTO
• Document approved by a recognized body, that
  provides, for common and repeated use, rules,
  guidelines or characteristics for products or
  related processes and production methods
• Importance of standards?
• Fundamental to engineering practice

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• Types of standards
• Prescriptive
• describe how elements are to designed, built,
  protected and maintained.
• Functional
• qualitative requirements describe how such items
  are to perform but no quantitative user or
  technical performance requirements are
  prescribed.
• Performance-based
• in which
• - qualitative functional requirements are
  established
• - quantitative user and technical performance
  criteria are provided and
• - acceptable solutions and evaluation and design
  tools are offered.

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PERFORMANCE BASED APPROACH
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Level 4
By application of design and construction rules
By testing and / or assessment
By application of well established engineering
principles
By expert opinion and judgment
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National standards
Foreword This South African standard was approved
by National Committee STANSA TC 5120.61,
Construction standards, in accordance with
procedures of Standards South Africa, in
compliance with annex 3 of the WTO/TBT agreement.
WORLD TRADE ORGANISATION AGREEMENT ON TECHNICAL
BARRIERS TO TRADE Annex 3 Code of good practice
for the preparation, adoption and application of
standards
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TC approves a work item
Working group prepares committee draft
30 days
Formatting / basic edit by StanSA
60 days
TC approves Committee Draft
Draft South African Standard issued for public
enquiry
Take account of comments
Technical review
Substantive changes
Editing
Ratification
Publication
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WTO GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT THE PLURILATERAL
AGREEMENT
1.    Technical specifications .shall not be
prepared, adopted or applied with a view to, or
with the effect of, creating unnecessary
obstacles to international trade. 2.    Technical
specifications prescribed by procuring entities
shall, where appropriate     (a)    be in terms
of performance rather than design or descriptive
characteristics and     (b)    be based on
international standards, where such exist
otherwise, on national technical regulations,
recognized national standards , or building
codes. 3.    There shall be no requirement or
reference to a particular trademark or trade name
..unless there is no sufficiently precise or
intelligible way of describing the procurement
requirements and provided that words such as or
equivalent are included in the tender
documentation.
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UNITED NATIONS COMMISSION ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE
LAW (UNCITRAL) UNCITRAL Model Law on Procurement
of Goods, Construction and Services
(1) Any specificationsthat create obstacles to
participation, including obstacles based on
nationality, by suppliers or contractors in the
procurement proceedings shall not be included or
used. (2) To the extent possible, any
specifications ..shall be based on the relevant
objective technical and quality characteristics
of the goods, construction or services to be
procured. There shall be no requirement of or
reference to a particular trade mark .unless
there is no other sufficiently precise or
intelligible way of describing the
characteristics of the goods, construction or
services to be procured and provided that words
such as "or equivalent" are included.
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specifications should be written so as not to
favour particular contractors or suppliers will
make it more likely that the procurement needs of
the procuring entity may be filled by a greater
number of suppliers or contractors, thereby
facilitating the use of as competitive a method
of procurement as is feasible under the
circumstances and in particular helping to limit
abusive resort to single-source procurement.
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South African Constitutional requirements for
procurement
Procurement system shall be fair, equitable,
transparent, competitive and cost effective
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CIDB Standard for Uniformity in Construction
Procurement
4.4.7 Scope of work 4.4.7.1 The scope of
work shall, wherever possible be a) described
in terms of performance rather than the design
or descriptive characteristics, and b) based on
national or international standards, where such
exist.
ISO SANS BS
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• Supply chain management regulations Municipal
  Finance Management Act
• specifications
• must be drafted in an unbiased manner to allow
  all potential suppliers to offer their goods and
  services
• must take account of any accepted standards such
  as those issued by Standards South Africa, the
  International Standards Organisation, or an
  authority accredited or recognized by the South
  African National Accreditation System, with
  which the equipment or material or workmanship
  should comply
• where possible, be described in terms of
  performance required rather than in terms of
  descriptive characteristics for design
• may not create trade barriers in contract
  requirements in the form of specifications,
  testing and test methods, .or conformity
  certification
• may not make reference to any particular trade
  mark

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Research and development

market
income
ve
-ve
Developproduct
Introduce to market
Concept
Market
Establish market
Typical product development cycle
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PERFORMANCE BASED APPROACH
Level 1
International approach
Level 2
Level 3
World Federation of Technical Assessment
Organisations
Level 4
By application of design and construction rules
By testing and / or assessment
By application of well established engineering
principles
By expert opinion and judgment
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CIDB Standard for Uniformity in Construction
Procurement
Based on the principal that there should be
complete separation in contract documentation
between conditions of tender, conditions of
contract specifications and terms of payment
(including methods of measurement).
Tender Notice and Invitation to Tender
Tender
Tender Data
Returnable schedules
Form of Offer and Acceptance
Contract Data
Pricing Data
Scope of Work
Contract
Site Information
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New
Historic system
Civil engineering
Roads and bridges
Construction works GCC 2004
General Conditions of contract for Civil
Engineering Works (6th edition - GCC 1990)
General Conditions of contract for Civil
Engineering Works (GCC 1990)
National standards
Standardised specifications for civil engineering
works SABS 1200 (1981 1996)
COLTO standard specification for Road and Bridge
Works for State Road Authorities (1998)
Standard industry methods of measurement
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Moving forward There is a need to fundamentally
overhaul construction practices as reflected in
current codes of practice, technical standards
etc in order to -capture recent advances /
introduce new technologies -reflect the changing
needs and priorities of SA society -align with
technical standards of our trading partners
-introduce more flexibility in specifications to
embrace a wider range of procurement and
contracting arrangements -promote ingenious
forms of construction and materials -enable
civil engineering works to be planned and
designed for the non-knowledgeable local
authorities and department -establish precisely
what the proliferation of test houses are testing
and confirming -counter the threat of having the
market flooded with inferior or sub-standard
imports -address the sustainable development
challenges of the day honour SAs WTO commitments
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What we have The basic framework for the
development and maintenance of national standards
and assessment of compliance with
requirements What is needed to populate
standards?
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• What is needed
• Strategic leadership to
• give policy direction,
• prioritise what needs to be done,
• regulate the testing for conformity with
  standards and
• direct funding flows for the development of
  standards.

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• Skills and capacity
• Significant attention is being focused on
  potential skills shortages and capacity
  constraints
• JIPSA, DPW, DPE, .
• cidb
• SOEs
• private sector
• .
• but
• skills shortages and capacity constraints do not
  only exist at the delivery level, but also at
  the academic, RD, technical infrastructure
  level

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Capacity of Technical Infrastructure

• Laboratories, testing facilities,
• Concern about capacity, state, funding, etc.

Barloworld supports upgrade of Varsity's
laboratories We have not had a major equipment
revamp since the mid-1980's . if we had to wait
for government to fund equipment upgrades through
its regular subsidy, we might have to wait
forever The faculty required R30-million for a
major overhaul, of which it had received
R12-million to date, Nkado told Engineering News
Online Engineering News, August 2006
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Codes, standards, specifications

• Disparate role players
• SABS, NHBRC, SAICE, ..
• Lack of resources, championing, .

How does one deal with the lack of volunteerism?
Who is available to develop standards?
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cidb

• Concept programme to promote HRD, RD and
  academic excellence
• proposal for Centers of Excellence
• Capacity of technical infrastructure
• exploratory phase
• Codes, standards, specifications for the built
  environment
• exploratory phase

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Centers of excellence objectives

• Development of sustained RD and academic
  capacity
• Increased and improved training of built
  environment professionals
• Targeted research in support of the needs of the
  construction industry
• particular focus on public sector
• Technology transfer to support the implementation
  of research outputs
• Transformation of the academic content and the
  academic and research infrastructure

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Centers of Excellence Status

• Concept plan developed
• In discussion with DPW, DoH, DoT
• DoT expanding existing initiatives

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Technical Infrastructure / codes, standards,
specifications

• Is there a need for an overall review of the
  system?
• similar to Fairclough Review in UK

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• The road ahead for a national specifications for
  road works
• Characterized by
• Leadership
• Decisions
• Culture change
• Greater flexibility
• Getting the best out of our available resources

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Thank you