project report-public
Tabaco port 1
Rehab of Six Ports to ease sea travel PPA constructs on reclaimed land by Ed Velasco
With the increasing number of passengers travelling through the maritime routes every year, the Philippine Ports Authority or PPA has lined up several port construction projects involving expansion, renovation and rehabilitation that started in October 2012 and will be completed by April 2014. The Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) is an attached agency of the Department of Transportation and Communications (DoTC) tasked to operate and manage all government sea ports and oversee privateowned ports in the country. Based on its statistics, the agency noted that the volume of sea passengers travelling within the archipelago have quadrupled particularly due to the increased use of the roll on, roll off (RoRo) transport system. The ports that will undergo rehabilitation, expansion and renovation are those in Tabaco in Albay, Pio Duran in Sorsogon, Ormoc City in Leyte, Lucena City in Quezon, Dumaguete City in Negros Oriental and Dumangas in Iloilo. Except for the Lucena port, all the other projects involve reclamation works where the ports will utilize recovered land stretching between 2-3 kilometers. Engr. Reynan Parafina, PPA project development department officer-in-charge, said the port projects will cost roughly P556 million but the funding will not come from the private sector since the projects are not part of the public-private partnership (PPP) program of the government. PPA initiative Engr. Parafina disclosed that the budget for the port constructions will come from the corporate funds of the PPA since the agency is one of the few government-owned and controlled corporations that earn consistently for the past several decades. 16 | Philippine Construction&Design May - June 2013
He said the projects’ aggregate cost is far lower than its original projection due to revisions made in project costing upon the instruction of then DoTC secretary Mar Roxas. The PPA official said that the agency was directed to source its construction materials like cement, steel, gravel and sand from local suppliers and hardware stores in the area where the projects are located. As a result of this initiative, the PPA was able to trim down costs to around P90 million-P95 million per port project. The original cost estimates were from P120 million-P150 million. The contracts were awarded in September 2012 to the following contractors: Makapa Construction for Pio Duran port; JC Pinon Construction Inc. for Lucena port; Mac Builders for Ormoc City port; WTG Construction and Development Corporation for Dumaguete City port; Sunwest Construction and Development Corporation for Tabaco, Albay port; and RRL Builders Corporation
“
Port projects are more difficult because the engineer must be able to work very well with the contractors. Those who are capable of building ports first secure special licenses from the Philippine Regulatory Commission or PRC before they can accept port construction jobs.
”
---Engr. Ding Gonzales, Engr. Reynan Parafina