Culverts/Bridge Projects
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Preamble Metro Technicals Limited has reputable knowledge of soil and other local conditions of North Eastern Rail Line. The washout of August 2000 occurred due to unusually stormy heavy downpour, inadequate and non properly maintained/channelised culverts accross the rail line. It may be recalled that CCECC, a chinese company had the opportunity of doing the maintenance and reballasting of this stretch before the washout. This stretch has the history of washout and breaches to the track formation. A contractor with adequate knowledge of the local conditions and of course genuine interest and commitment to the project would have carried out surveys of various catchment areas with a view to determining where additional culverts and openings are required. If this has been done storm water will discharge into the other sides without damage to the track formation, making the present contemplated expenditure unnecessary. Even if the construction of more culverts and channelisation were not part of the original contract the contractor would have pushed for variations as they usually do in their projects. |
Track formation was breached as in above (Km.1098 and Km1099), because of no culverts. However, two culverts built in those location presently was handled by Metro Technicals Limited.
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Similar situations came up when we were constructing several culverts across the washed-out sections, we had to do channelisation up to 70 - 100 meters of concreting (in some cases) and stone-pitching at the needed areas to ensure the safety of the culverts themselves (see the photograph below). |
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It cost us about five million naira at that time to achieve all those, meanwhile they were not part of the contract. Though, the supervising engineer recommended to the management to pay for these extra works but nothing happened due to lack of funds they said. However, we are happy and satisfied with our sacrifice, when we found the culverts in good conditions during our tour of the project sites one year after execution. This buttresses the point we have been making that companies, especially foreign firms, who do not have a stake or special interest other than profit maximisation in a project will never sacrifice as we did. |
