ISLAMABAD: Ministry of Communication and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) jointly organized a seminar on “Road Management: Enabling economic corridors through sustainable transport sector development”, here Wednesday. Secretary Communication Shahid Ashraf Tarar was the chief guest on the occasion. Country Director of Asian Development Bank (ADB) Resident Mission in Islamabad Ms. Xiaohong Yang, International experts – Forbs Johnston, Ian Greenwood, Janusz Sobieniak; and delegates from four provincial highway departments also participated in the event.
Secretary Communications, in his opening remarks, welcomed the visiting delegates. He said the prime objective of today’s gathering was to raise awareness and benefits of performance based contracts (PBC) for roads and facilitate the sharing of practitioners experiences and best practices.
He said that PBC approach was getting popularity world over as it offers several advantages over more traditional approaches by saving cost in managing and maintaining road assets, developing the ability to manage the road network with fewer staff; and resulting in better customer satisfaction with road service and conditions. He informed the audience that National Highway Authority (NHA) had already established a separate wing for road asset management and was successfully operating regarding proper maintenance of the national road network.
He hoped the seminar would help build capacity of the participants through emerging techniques of maintenance contracts.
Ikramus Saqlain Haider, General Manager of NHA Road Asset Management Wing apprised the audience about the principle concepts and system components to optimize performance in maintaining the road assets.
