AFTER four years of work with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), engineers with the Ministry Roads and Highways and its agencies are set to implement revised road and bridge management manuals and designs for optimum results.
The technical cooperation project funded by JICA, was to improve the capacity of improvement and maintenance through the revision of current manuals on road planning and design, and road/bridge maintenance and management.
Government, in 2019 appealed to the Japanese International Corporation to provide assistance with the review of outdated road and bridge maintenance manuals, “because things have changed ; we are now in the technology era.
JICA’s support also culminated in bridge inspections, where periodically engineers will have to inspect existing bridges against best standards, the results of which will determine the type of maintenance to be provided.
Director of Policy, Planning and Budgeting at the Ministry of Roads and Highways, Ing. Mrs Rita Ohene-Sarfo told journalists “ what has been most critical for us has been the experience gained by our own engineers. In this review of manuals and designs everything was done by our own people.
Hitherto, engineers had to do a lot of walking during routine checks and maintenance, in identifying the roughness index , but with the new technology brought in courtesy JICA, “all we need do is to procure an android phone or an Iphone which is fixed in the car and picks information for assessment purposes.
The new technology makes work less stressful and saves time, she indicated.
Ing. Ohene-Sarfo had earlier made a passionate appeal to JICA to assist with the training of local contractors in the technical specifications.
“Technical specification is what we put in a contract to specify that if you are a contractor and you are patching a pothole these are the items you will need to do. If you are grading these are the specifications,” she explained.
