{UAH} Did Dongo Kungu cost Sh1bn per kilometre?

Did Dongo Kungu cost Sh1bn per kilometre?

Jun. 25, 2018, 12:30 am

By MUSYOKA WA KYENDO

Artistic impression of the Dongo Kundu bypass./COURTESY

Did the Dongo Kundu by-pass in Mombasa cost Sh1 billion per kilometre?

That would make it the most expensive road project in the world, beating Uganda's Entebbe expressway by Sh100 million.

The expressway was branded the most expensive road by Uganda's Parliamentary Committee on State Enterprises. The committee protested that "a kilometre cost an alleged $9.3 million." Of course the politicians were wrong — either innocently or by design. They wanted "to fix" a PS who refused to approve their two-week "benchmarking trip". The highway cost roughly $2.325 million per kilometre.

So did Dongo Kundu cost Sh1 billion a kilometre? Yes and No. Here is why.

We are accustomed to counting the heads of cows to know how rich we are. Road engineers count the legs to cost a road. So they come up with more legs than the heads. There is more tarmacked road (the legs) than the distance (the cow). To that extent the answer is No; but it cost Sh1 billion if we add all the legs.

Engineers cost roads in terms of kilometre lanes. There are very few one-lane — say one-way — roads in the country. Many roads are a two-way, one lane going in one direction and in the opposite direction. Those are cost as two kilometre lanes where you see one road. Treat the yellow line in between as the boundary of each road.

In the 2016-17 annual report, the Kenya National Highways Authority uses the same method to estimate their output in road construction progress. They have a column for distance in kilometres and a column for work done in the financial year in terms of kilometre lanes.For instance, the Rumuruti-Maralal road is 45km, yet the authority shows it did 81.5km-lanes on the road. What this means simply is they had done a 40.75km distance of the road and only 4.25km were left. The road was, therefore, 91 per cent done.

Dongo Kundu is a dual carriageway — a four-lane highway. Forget the "Berlin Wall" dividing the four lanes, and any service roads, bridges and interchanges and concentrate on the lanes. There are four lanes, each 11km long. The kilometres of tarmac road on that section are11km by four: That is 44km. If you divide Sh11 billion by 44, you get Sh250 million per kilometre lane or Sh1 billion for four lanes per kilometre. Now, if we add up the cost of any service roads, bridges, (I am told there is a 630 metre-long bridge) and the interchanges, then the cost per kilometre lane could be lower than Sh250 million.

The length of road is the same as the number of round trips you would drive from one end to the other.If in doubt, take the 29km Southern by-pass in Nairobi and do a two-round trip on both lanes each way to Kikuyu or Mombasa Road. Be sure to record the mileage at the start of the trip and record the distance after the two trips then subtract the initial count. See if you will get 29km or more. The result will tell you how many kilometres of road there is on that 29km distance.

Which is why the roads authorities should be caned for poor public education. They should anticipate questions and answer them. One way is giving full details of the works, the product and the average cost.

There are economists and engineers among the officials in KeNHA and Kura, who should give the communications department the right information. The division should also be proactive and advise on the sort of information to be released to the public. That is why it exists — to help in information dissemination not just to send pictures of the completed project.

KeNHA and Kura do not exist primarily to tell us how smooth our roads will be and how easy our travel will be on completed roads. That is secondary information. The primary information is how much the road cost, and why it cost that much. The taxpayer needs to know how much the services provided by the government cost and why. They want to know if they are getting value for money and if their money is being spent well.

We need to know how many lanes, per road, the cost per kilometre lane, the terrain of the location of the road and how it affects the cost of the road. How many bridges, the elevation of the road, if any.

The moral here is, to audit any engineering project objectively, we must start with the detailed design of the project for that is where the devil is; where costing is done, contract components are defined and justified.

The detailed design also shows the physical features of the project area and what has to be constructed where. For example, it shows intersections, bridges, overpasses, service roads, pedestrian paths, culverts, drains, climbing lanes, bus stops, etc in case of roads.

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Gwokto La'Kitgum

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"Even a small dog can piss on a tall building" Jim Hightower

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