Evaluation of the demonstration project on road maintenance, Costa Rica : executive summary

External evaluation covers the period 11/84-8/86 and is based on document review, interviews with participants, and site visits and unannounced road inspections. The project has successfully demonstrated that RM by private contractors is both feasible and effective. Physical results have been good and public reaction highly favorable. Procedures for planning, contracting, etc. were generally well-conceived and professionally carried out, and relationships among participants and with contractors and local governments have been satisfactory or better. Further, the Ministry of Public Transportation (MOPT) has shown new interest in RM alternatives and local capacities have been enhanced. Project administration by the Asociacion de Carreteras y Caminos de Costa Rica (ACCCR), a nonprofit organization, has been excellent. Similar arrangements in which private entities manage RM on public roads should work well elsewhere, at least in the short term, provided there is a suitable and willing entity. Some of the procedures used by ACCCR (e.g., shifting funds among subprojects - SP's - and the use of simplified, accelerated bidding and contracting procedures) probably could not be transferred to the MOPT, given its need for public scrutiny and multiple certification. A large pavement recycling SP conducted near the capital has been completed, while work continues on SP's to maintain and/or rehabilitate roads in central and southern Costa Rica. The latter SP's experienced some problems in that their work programs were based on a prior RM study which was too general for application to specific roads and did not accurately define the amount of rehabilitation work needed. Both SP's had to be scaled back and large amounts of "cost-plus" work were needed. However, high contractor productivity in routine activities compensated in part for these problems. The project's lessons include: (1) RM and rehabilitation can probably be done more cheaply, and certainly more dependably, by contract than by government agencies, which cannot marshal the resources to perform work on schedule; (2) work programs for competitive bidding must be well-defined; (3) site surveys are needed for planning non-routine maintenance and for betterments; (4) despite efforts to make prior legal arrangements, problems arose with the host government regarding import duties and classification of grant funds; (5) contractual relationships must be carefully drawn, even in a maintenance demonstration, and even when the parties involved have a cooperative relationship; and (6) force account work by contractors should be avoided, and unit price work emphasized.