NHAI agrees to NHBF's suggestions on dispute resolution

To resolve issues and increase the pace of construction of highway projects, NHAI has agreed to most of the suggestions made by the National Highways Builders Federation (NHBF) related to project delivery. The suggestions were made on nine areas that included COVID-19 Relief, bidding process, contract management, old & new Model EPC agreements, improvement of concession agreement of Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM), improvement of concession agreement based on BOT (Toll) and project preparation. NHAI has reported that the suggestions made by NHBF were deliberated upon by them for proper redressal and the authority has agreed to 25 suggestions related to the issues. NHAI has also assured that all good suggestions shall be positively considered in future as well. Other policy-related suggestions have been sent to the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways for consideration. Some of the key suggestions accepted by NHAI include the extension of time to contractor/ concessionaire for construction period without imposition of any cost or penalty by the Project Director up to 3 months and Regional Officer for more than 3 months and up to 6 months. To enable the bidder to have an assessment of road condition at the time of bidding, NHAI shall provide DPR along with Network Survey Vehicle (NSV)/LIDAR data as per availability to the bidders.