National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL) is a fully owned company of the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways, Government of India.
Since 2016, NHIDCL has sanctioned 39 road infrastructure projects in the state of Nagaland. The total length of these projects is 795.50 km with a total project cost of Rs 13,038.32 crore.
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(PC: twitter @nhidcl)
An analysis of NHIDCL project updates as on April 2023 revealed that out of 39 projects sanctioned for Nagaland since 2016, work orders have been issued for 28 projects.
These 28 projects covering 609.56 km road length had a total project cost of Rs 9947.45 crore.
NHIDCL awards contracts based on an e-tendering process which is said to be a highly competitive and transparent tendering process.
Through this e-tender process, competitive bids were received at Rs 5880.58 crore against works for which estimated total project cost was Rs 9947.45 crore. In percentage terms, the bids were on an average 59% of the estimated total project cost.
This resulted in a saving of a whopping Rs 4066. 87 crore against total project cost which is 41% cost saved as compared to estimated cost.
The average estimated cost of construction per km of road was Rs 16.319 crore while the bidding value was Rs 9.65 crore per km, or bidding value was 59% of the estimated cost.
Against an average project cost of Rs 355.36 crore, the average bid received was Rs 210.02 crore; thereby saving on an average Rs145.34 crore per project.
NHIDCL company promotes, surveys, establishes, designs, builds, operates, maintains and upgrades National Highways and Strategic Roads including interconnecting roads in parts of the country which share international boundaries with neighbouring countries.
It has been widely acknowledged that use of information technology has become a most powerful instrument of the ministry.
Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister of Ministry of Road Transport & Highways has been credited with transformation of India’s road infrastructure growth story.
Major works of NHIDCL has been in difficult terrain like North Eastern region and border areas. Ministry of Road Transport & Highways developed key IT infrastructures to achieve significant results in improving transparency, better monitoring and greater control over projects implementation.
INFRACON: The services of domain experts and consultancy firms are procured and deployed as key personnels for project preparation and monitoring of projects. Consultants and consultancy firms upload their credentials online for automatic evaluation of their technical proposals.
INAM-Pro: It has been developed as a platform for infrastructure and materials providers. With this platform, the aim is to free the infrastructure sector from external impediments like materials shortages, cost escalations due to material prices. This portal checks cartelisation and inflationary pressures on pricing of cement and steel.
ePACE: It (Projects Appraisal and Continuing Enhancements) is an online integrated management information system (MIS) designed to monitor and improve the progress of highways development works, dynamic manner, thus aiding in monitoring and expediting the pace of the projects.
Astute leadership, strategic use of information technology that enabled transparency and accountability in the process appears to have yielded significant results.
