Last week, the Tribune brought to the attention of the taxpaying public the issue local engineers raised with regards to the construction of the Catanduanes People’s Center inside the Catanduanes State University campus.
The center was proposed for funding by Congressman Eulogio Rodriguez early into his term and is intended to provide offices for national agencies like the National Bureau of Investigation and Professional Regulations so that Catandunganons would no longer endure the arduous sea travel and spend so much to secure clearances and renew licenses.
Designed by the DPWH regional office and initially funded with P44 million, the project was awarded to a local contractor which dutifully purchased materials and began construction for the two-story public building.
Under the supervision of the contractor’s engineer and the watchful eye of the DPWH regional office’s project engineer, workers installed the reinforced concrete column’s main rebars with a length appropriate to that of a two-storey structure.
Sometime after this, someone – most likely the congressman – decided it would be nice to have an assembly hall in the center and provided in the DPWH budget for CY 2024 an additional P30 million, on top of the P30 million intended for Phase II or the completion of the two-story building as originally designed.
To cut the story short, the DPWH regional office and the contractor proceeded with the construction of an additional floor with a high ceiling that would be technically equivalent to two more floors.
There should have been no problem, except that the remaining part of the original column rebar extended only 40 centimeters from the base of the third-floor column.
As pointed out by local civil engineers, the exposed length of the original rebar would not be long enough to satisfy the provision of the National Structural Code of the Philippines (NSCP) regarding lap splices.
A lap splice is created when two pieces of rebar are overlapped to create a continuous line of rebar.
The NSCP provision requires that such lap splices are permitted only within the center half of the member length, or in this case, the height of the column between the beams.
The Tribune also discovered that at the time this design flaw was raised, the DPWH submitted its building permit application for the Catanduanes People’s Center, but only for the original two-story building.
Had no one pointed out the obvious violation of the structural code, the Virac building official could have issued the permit, for the two-story building, and unknowingly allowed the flawed construction of the third floor assembly hall.
It would have exposed to a potential lawsuit not only the DPWH personnel and the contractor but also the building official and even the municipal mayor if a strong earthquake, heaven forbid, should happen in the future and cause the collapse of the edifice.
Now, this is the second time that clear evidence of poor planning and design has been found in projects of the DPWH regional office, all inside the CatSU campus.
The first was the construction of the multi-purpose building launched with great fanfare during the groundbreaking of the CatSU eco-zone in May 2023.
Nine months after the event, the supposed two-story structure remains unfinished and without a roof, after someone (probably the end-user) wanted its second phase built some one hundred meters away, in violation of the contract, procurement law and plain common sense.
It is crystal clear that the interference of politicians, as well as aspiring politicians, in the actual implementation of infrastructure projects is not only wasting a lot of precious taxpayer’s money but also endangering the public they are supposed to serve.