Assessment of highway infrastructure projects in Latin America and Perú from the competences point of view

The design phase of the highway project is not important.

The important part is the construction phase.

In the bid process, the law rewards the lowest budget.

Contractor’s priority: finish the project and save expenses.

The design phase of the highway project is not important. Therefore, the budget is low, resulting in poor quality.

Contractor’s priority: ensure to get the project with the lowest budget and once they get the project, ask for additional budget arguing low quality of the design.

The additional budget is not for quality improvements but for finishing the project, causes an ethical problem.

What happens with other companies who proposed a real budget for better quality? They start legal actions.

Contractor of the highway is paid by work-load. For example, how many cubic metres of dirt he has moved? On the other hand, the supervisor is paid per day of work.

Project ends when the construction phase ends.

Contractor wants to finish early, so he can save overheads and other types of costs. At the same time, the supervisor wants to finish late since he gets payment per day of work. This situation generates many disputes between them.

If the project ends with the construction of the highway, this means that there is no maintenance and therefore a strong process of deterioration will begin.

The main problem is to allocate more resources to projects. At the same time, professionals who work for the public sector must have low salaries. Idea: “It is important to give good example to the citizens”.

Project managers are chosen for their availability or their approach to the leaders and not necessarily for their skills or competencies.