8th CONFERENCE ON ASPHALT PAVEMENTS FOR SOUTHERN AFRICA

SMALL CONTRACTOR DEVELOPMENT IN BOTSWANA THROUGH LABOUR

BASED ROUTINE ROAD MAINTENANCE

B. Obika+ Roughton International, P.O Box 10062, Gaborone.

bernardobika@aol.com
E. Masimega Roads Department, P/Bag 0026, Gaborone
M. Segokgo Roads Department, P/Bag 0026 Gaborone.
C. Overby, Norwegian Public Roads Administration, Oslo, Norway

Abstract
The recognition by Roads Department that a vibrant local contractor industry is key to
sustainable efficiency in road maintenance led to the undertaking of a
demonstration project for the training and establishment of small scale local
contractors in routine road maintenance using Labour Based Methods (LBM).
Many of the over 2000 km of roads planned for National Development Plan 8 (NDP
8) are secondary and access roads which are suitable to labour based methods.
Thus if appropriately planned and executed, the use of LBM could assist in
employment creation and private sector participation both of which are key
aspirations of NDP8
The project comprised the pre-selection, training, awarding of contracts and
supervision of Citizen contractors (including on the job training) to undertake routine
maintenance work using labour based methods. At all stages of the project
emphasis was placed on community and stakeholder participation.

Results of the project have shown that substantial reductions in rural unemployment
can be achieved through an expanded LBM routine road maintenance programme.
Accidents resulting from impact with animals have been reduced, and there is
increased ownership of the facilities by the communities. A model for future
enhanced public/private sector partnering is defined and recommendations for wider
application of LBM routine road maintenance are made.

The results also high light the need for advocacy and LBM mainstreaming with
regard to rural poverty reduction.

1. INTRODUCTION

As part of its efforts to maximise the use of Labour Based Methods in road works
Roads Department appointed Roughton International in 1999 to undertake, as a
Demonstration project, the Training and Establishment of small scale local
contractors in Routine Road Maintenance using Labour Based Methods (LBM)
The key objectives for the project were:
• the creation of employment particularly in rural areas in line with the key
objectives of NDP 8
• the development of local contractors,
• the efficient maintenance of the national road network, and
• the establishment of a model for sustaining the above three aims through the use
of consultants to manage maintenance works.

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The LBM Routine Maintenance project formed part of a wider labour base
programme within the Roads Department, Ministry of Works, Transport and
Communications, a component of which falls under it’s Institutional Co-operation with
the Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA). Participating agencies included
NORAD, UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the International
Labour Organisation (ILO).

The project comprised the pre-selection, training, awarding of contracts and

supervision of citizen contractors (including on the job training) to undertake routine
maintenance work using Labour based methods. At all stages of the project
emphasis was placed on community and stakeholder participation through
consultations.

This paper documents the implementation methodology, the results and makes
recommendations for wider application of LBM routine maintenance based on
lessons learnt from the demonstration project.
The major stages of the project comprised:
a) Pre-contract services including, project design, the selection and pre-
training of potential, emerging and small contractors and tender
documentation
b) Supervision and on-the-job training of contractors.
c) Provision of post-contract services.
The maintenance works stage of the project commenced in June 2000 and ended in
December 2001.

2. BACKGROUND AND APPROACH

Within NDP 8 a large road construction programme was planned which would result
in an increase in the paved road network from 5500 km to over 7500 km. Most of
these roads were to be secondary and access roads which are suitable for labour
based methods. Growing unemployment, which, in 1998, was 21% of working
population, (BIDPA 1997) necessitated renewed efforts by Government to maximise
the use of labour based methods on all projects where it is technically and
economically feasible to do so. Government policy stipulated that
‘each Ministry should identify budgeted and planned maintenance and other
recurrent activities as well as development projects that should be implemented
using labour based approaches’
The policy further stipulated that :
‘Labour based components of the social safety net should take the form of
permanent programme to be specifically targeted to the poor”
The overall approach and pace adopted for the implementation of the LBM Routine
Maintenance was dictated by a number of prevailing factors including:

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• The availability in terms of numbers and capacity of local contractors able to

participate in the programme
• The need to ensure that the project moved sufficiently quickly to capitalise on the
opportunities for development of contractors presented by the large NDP 8
programme
• Training requirements
• Prevailing constraints influencing the development of the small contractor some of
which have been high lighted in this paper.
• Prevailing constraints to the wider application of labour based methods including
the erroneous public and private sector perceptions relating to quality and
productivity of labour based techniques.
• Government, Central Tender Board and Roads Department policies and project
implementation regulations.

The above factors resulted in, for example, the pre-contract contractor training
programme being streamlined over a shorter period of time than in other contractor
development programmes (Stock and Veen, 1996).

3 PROJECT ROADS AND CONTRACT PACKAGING

Three routine maintenance demonstration projects were identified as follows:

• Section 1: Dibete-Mahalapye 85 km
• Section 2: Nokaneng-Sepopa 117 km
• Section 3: Lobatse – Ramatlabama 50 km
•
The Central tender board maintains a list of registered contractors who are
categorised into O/C, A, B, C, D grades depending on the financial limit of projects
they can undertake. This in turns is dependent on they financial capacity and
experience.
In order to allow the A and OC grade contractors to participate taking into account
the Central Tender Board financial ceilings, the Dibete-Mahalapye road was split into
three sections for Opportunity Category (OC) grade contractors. The Nokaneng –
Sepopa was awarded to a B grade contractor who was required to split the work into
three subsections (36.2 km, 43.2 km and 34.8 km lengths) and to sub-contracted two
subsections of the road to OC grade contractors. The Lobatse-Ramatlabama road
was retained as a single project suitable for an A grade contractor: The project roads
and contract packaging comprised the following:
Table 1: Project Packaging
Sectio Description Length Contracto
n Km r grade
Dibete-Mmamabula 25.2 O/C
1 Mmamabula-Palla Road 28.4 O/C
Palla Road -Mahalapye 33.8 O/C
O/C
Nokaneng-Gumare 36.2 (Subcontr
act)
2 Gumare-Etsha 13 Jcn 43.2 B
O/C
Etsha 13 Jcn-Sepopa 39.8 (Subcontr
act)

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Lobatse Central-
3 50.1 km A
Ramatlabama

4 PRE-CONTRACT ACTIVITIES;

Activities undertaken prior to pre-selection and training of contractors included:

• Community consultations, Pre-qualification meetings and Pre-selection
• Detailed visual inspection and condition data acquisition for each of the project
roads
• Definition of Roads Department Maintenance standards
• Definition of routine maintenance tasks to be performed, determination of
quantities and development of technical specifications for each task
• Identification of likely resource, unit costs and time requirements for tasks
• Development of costs estimates using Roughton International’s Routine
Maintenance planning and budgeting system.
• Contract packaging to meet OC and A category contractors financial ceilings as
appropriate.
• Tendering, Tender Evaluation and award.

The community consultations involved a sociologist who conducted numerous

Kgotla meetings at communities adjacent to the project roads. The consultation
informed the communities of the project and sought their participation. It also
provided key socio –demographic and gender data useful in the project design and
advise to contractors on recruitment. The population and availability of workers
along the project roads is shown in Table 2.
Table 2: Population and available workers along project roads.
Combined Estimated number of
Population at 1991
Section

estimated available workers

Name of Census
population
Village
Village 1999
Satellites Sedentary Mobile
Dibete –Mahalapye

Dibete 752 130 1 222 122 24

Section 1:

Dinokwe 693 575 1 374 137 27

Bonwapitse 465 96 744 74 14

Mahalapye 28 078 5 940 38 155 3 815 763

Nokaneng 1 464 1 626 3 781 378 75

Nokaneng –
Section 2:

Gumare 3 539 2 143 7 293 729 45

Sepopa

Etsha 820 4 547 6 288 628 125

Sepopa 806 1 562 2 709 271 54

Ramatlabama

Pitsane 2 212 nil 2 599 260 52

Section 3:
Lobatse –

Rakhuna 1 157 260 1 570 157 31

Ramatlabama 1 150 nil 1 154 115 23

All potential and registered OC grade Contractors were contacted to attend pre-
qualification meetings in the location where the work was to be done. The response
to this communication resulted in 79 un-registered and 28 registered OC grade
contractors attending the meetings for the initial programme .

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Results of screening and pre-selection of contractors is shown in Table 3. It had been

decided to restrict the tender to registered contractors.

Table 3: Contractor interest and qualification

Initial identification

Chosen to tender
First screening

Attended pre-
qualification

Found to be
Category

Remarks
exercise

suitable
None pre-qualified due to
un-registered 155 123 79 12 0 oversupply of OC grade
contractors
OC 112 104 28 18 14

A 24 24 8 6 6

The Pre-bid training of contractors dealt with technical aspects of labour based
methods, the management of labour, the setting of tasks, project management,
financial management, bid preparation and costing. A combined total of 42
contractors received pre-bid training.

The FIDIC1 short form contract was used as it provided sufficient safeguard for the
Client, whilst at the same time allowing sufficient flexibility for the development of
contractors.

A key aspect of the implementation of the project, was the requirement for all the
contractors to open a project dedicated bank account in which all cheques had to be
countersigned by the Engineer. This was instituted in order to tighten financial control
and mitigate the use of project funds by the contractors for activities other than the
project.

Tenders for the various projects were opened in February 2000. The Tenders
submitted by the OC Grade Contractors were generally of a higher quality than those
submitted by the A Grade Contractors. There are no obvious explanations for this
anomaly. The number of Tenders submitted were lower than expected. Of the
fourteen OC Grade Contractors pre-qualified, only eight submitted tenders for a total
of six contract sections. Of the six A Grade Contractors pre-qualified, only five
submitted tenders for contract section Ramatlabama Border Post to Lobatse.

The tender rates generally varied widely and were generally higher than the
Engineer’s estimate by the order of 40 to 60 % . This was attributed to the lack of
contractors experience in Labour base which would be expected to improve as they
acquire more experience. The initial bids for Nokaneng – Sepopa were considered
too high and these were re-tendered.

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International Federation of Civil Engineers

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5 CONTRACT EXECUTION AND RESULTS

The work carried out by the contractors on site comprised:

• Drain cleaning • cattle chasing

• Road sign repairs • Attendance to urgent repairs
• Road surface repairs • Edge repairs
• Pavement repairs • Fencing repairs
• Removal of boulders • Shoulder repairs
• Block work repairs • Crack repairs
• Bush clearing • De littering
• Grass cutting • Plastering of block work
• Destumping • Culvert cleaning

The major items were grass cutting, shoulder repairs, cattle chasing, de-littering and
fence repairs. These together constitute over 75% of contract payment.

Road Condition and contractor performance

The general standard of routine maintenance by all contractors was good. The
following Table 4 provides a subjective summary of comparative performance of the
contractors.

Table 4: Contractor performance

g of Contract
Understandin
Organisation
Mobilisation/

Management

Management
performance
Technical

Financial
Site

Contractor

Contractor A 2 3 3 2 2
Contractor B 3 3 3 2 3
Contractor C 2 3 3 2 3
Contractor D 1 2 2 1 2
Contractor E 3 3 3 2 4
Note: The table below gives a score on from 1-5 (I = poor, 5=excellent) against various performance criteria for the contractors. The
subjective score is based on their performance throughout the project. The assessment is largely empirical.

By the end of the contract most of the contractors had undertaken work to the value
of and claimed over 85% of the contract sums.

Employment Created and Gender

Table 5 provides a break down of labour between male and female workers and
shows a 61/39 split in favour of males with a total of 66211 worker days being

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generated in the duration of the project. This is equivalent to providing full time
employment to 174 people per year.
Table 5: Worker days and Male/female split

Contractor Total worker days % Male % Female

Contractor A 8191 62 38
Contractor B 11104 64 36
Contractor C 14207 62 38
Contractor D 16446 57 43
Contractor E 16263 62 38
Total/av 66211 61 39

More men were employed than women, although more Women (742) had been
registered than men (661) for employment during the initial community consultation.
The reason for this is not clear and requires further study to examine socio-cultural
aspects. Particularly given that income to female headed households has been
shown to contribute more to poverty alleviation than income to men. (BIDPA 1997)

If the LBM routine maintenance is widened to cover the entire network the projected
effect on employment generated is shown in Table 6. This indicates that national
unemployment could be reduced by upto 7% if LBM is used to maintain the entire
road network and by nearly 3% if restricted to the paved road network.

Table 6 Employment projections

project (18 months)
Worker days (male

worker years (male

% of working pop *
employment (40%)

% of unemployed
Worker years per
Project scenario

female years of
and female) for
and female)

pop**
year
Km

This
Demonstration 222 66211 261 174 68 0.03 0.07
project

Paved network 9500 2,565,219 9717 7445 2903 1.2 2.95

National Road
23000 6,210,530 23525 18027 7030 3. 7.15
network

Costs and Productivity

The cost per km for routine maintenance varied from one project to the other and is
a combination of the specific project conditions/quantity of work and the contractor
pricing and performance factors. See Table 8.

Table 7: Cost Per Km by Contract.

Contractor
“benchma
per month

Km per yr

Km per yr
Pula/ Km

Pula/ Km

rk” price
US $ per

US $ per
Pula per

% of
Km

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Contractor A 54679 3037 36452 9493 6328 138

Contractor B 39581 2199 26307 6872 4581 100
Contractor C 52643 2925 35059 9139 6093 133
Contractor D 35801 1999 23867 6215 4143 91
Contractor E 23411 3902 46822 4064 8128 177
Average 41223 33701
Exchange rate =5.76Pula to 1US$
Contractor B rate taken as benchmark

Overall it was considered that productivity of labour was below what would normally
be expected and that this could be improved in future projects by further contractor
training particularly on task work management.

Cattle Chasing
The chasing of cattle away from the road reserve resulted in over 50% reduction on
animal-vehicle collision along the Dibete-Mahalapye sections. Cattle chasing work
continued through the night. Designated, pre-determined lengths of road was given
to each cattle chaser and the contractor was paid for the number of people engaged.

Methods of Measurement and Quantities

It was clear that some methods of measurement specified could not be easily applied
on site. The demonstration project has allowed these to be refined for future LBM
routine Maintenance contracts together with improved estimates of frequency for
certain interventions, which in practise, varied considerable on site.
The most appropriate method for dealing with cut vegetation generated some debate
in terms of it’s impact on costs and environmental aspects.

With the exception of snakes found during unloading of cut grass from haulage
lorries, there were no other worker safety issues arising from the project.

Project monitoring and on the job training

Extensive data was collected using prescribed forms for all contracts. Monthly and
quarterly reports were prepared. On the job training (OJT) of contractors was
provided by supervisors and the consultants project management team. The
contractors, on the whole, considered that the OJT was inadequate and requested
for more training on future projects.

6 DISCUSSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The lessons learnt have been used to develop recommendations for the wider
application of LBM routine road maintenance in Botswana. The recommendations fall
into seven main categories comprising:

1. Policy and Institutional considerations

2. Training and Development of Contractors
3. Contractual Issues
4. Management
5. Community Consultation, Participation and Gender
6. Operational
7. Awareness and Dissemination

It is recommended that the maintenance of the road network using Labour Based
Methods be expanded through the use of trained contractors who are supervised by
private sector consultants. In order to do this it is further recommended that a

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number of associated measures be taken such as the regular review and updating of
the contractors registration and categorisation. Including an examination of how
applicable CTB ceilings are to routine maintenance works.

Where possible, it is recommended that term contracts be used.

There is a clear need for the training of more contractors and it is recommended that
a more longer term approach is required in collaboration with other stake holders
such as Botswana Construction Industry Training Trust Fund (BCITTF)

The use of the FIDIC short form contract is recommended.

An incremental approach to widening the LBM routine road maintenance programme

should be tailored to match private sector capacity and re-orientate public sector
resources.

7 CONCLUSION

The LBM routine road maintenance project was initiated by Roads Department in
response to the key objectives of NDP 8 which include the creation of employment
and enhanced private sector participation as the engine of economic growth. As the
Plan period nears its end, there is a need to appraise results of the demonstration
project as basis for future plans. The use of LBM for Public works programmes is
not new in Botswana (McCutcheon 1990, 1996. Brudefors et al 1992, Mayer and
Gladson 1997, Obika 1998, 1999). However the participation of private sector
contractors and consultants for the first time in Botswana has been fundamental to
success of the current project.

The key positive outputs of the project include:

• The creation of substantial employment for the rural poor

• The training and development of 42 mixed grade contractors many of whom are
now able to undertake routine road maintenance work using labour based
methods
• Effective maintenance of the road network which has resulted in, for example,
substantial reduction in accidents attributable to animal-vehicle impacts.
• The development of a framework for the involvement of private sector consultants
in road maintenance.
• Improved rural community interest and participation in the maintenance of their
road asset

8. REFERENCES

McCutcheon, R.T., 1996. Research in employment intensive construction and

related development issues at the University of the Witwatersrand. University of
witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

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 8th CONFERENCE ON ASPHALT PAVEMENTS FOR SOUTHERN AFRICA

Mayer, W and Gladson, K.K., 1997. Addressing unemployment problems

through expanding labour-based public works programmes. Botswana
Development Issues No.1, Friedrich Ebert Stflung

Stock, E. A. and Veen, Jan de., 1996. Expanding labour based methods for road
works in Africa. World Bank Technical paper No. 347.

Brudefors, U. Keam, D. and Strom, O., Review of technical status, LG-117 labour
intensive public works labour based programme. Ministry of Local Government,
Lands and Housiing (MLGH), Gaborone.

McCutcheon, R.T., 1990. Labour-intensive road construction and maintenance

in Africa: an Introduction. The Civil Engineer in South Africa Vol. 32 (11) November
483-491.

Obika B.,1998. Proceedings of the workshop on application of labour based

methods in road works. Botswana Roads Department, Gaborone.

Obika , B. Pinard M and Kemsley B; 1999. Small contractor empowerment in

Botswana through labour based road works. Proc. 7th Conference on Asphalt
Pavements for Southern Africa (CAPSA), Victoria Falls.

BIDPA: Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis. 1997. Study of poverty
and poverty alleviation in Botswana. Ministry of Finance and Development
Planning,Gaborone.

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