Patna,(BiharTimes):My heart sank when I heard this tragic incident of bridge collapse in Kolkata. My prayers are with those who lost their near and dears ones. The loss of life caused is irreparable by any means.

On the other hand I am also infuriated by the shear apathy of the contractor who attributed it to an act of God. As a citizen of India I feel tremendous pain that my country men are being killed like animals due to the negligence of those who are entrusted with responsibility of creating infrastructure. As an engineer I know how such projects are funded, designed and constructed in other developed countries. I won’t blame any one agency or person for giving this pain of lifetime to families of the deceased.

The whole ecosystem consisting of conflicting vested interests of politicians, contractors and engineers are at fault. Politicians either want a cut and sometimes early completion for vote banks. Contractors win projects by showcasing their best people for winning their project and then assigning their cheapest to execute it. Engineers are working for the contractors to hash out the design in a very tight time schedule and to keep the construction cost minimum. When I talk to engineer friends in India they say that only way to get a project or assignment is that you have to do it cheap. If you are taking time to produce quality design and drawings and ask for more fees, you won’t survive for long.

Unfortunately the way the projects are awarded to the lowest bid contractors who then hires the cheapest engineering consultants is against the very tenets of planning and engineering. In other parts of the world, you do planning and engineering first and then hire a contractor to construct as per engineers plan and drawings in the most economical way. You spend time and money in planning and design so that you can reduce the risk and cost in construction. In India things are handled the opposite way – you hire the contractor who hires the engineer to design per the contractor’s whims.

In all this chaos, the larger interest of the public safety and convenience is completely ignored. While the Indian origin engineers are designing world class infrastructure everywhere else, it is unfortunate the engineers in India have fallen prey to the contractor and politician nexus. Because the root of the problem lies in the system. It is ridiculous that we are making billions and trillions of dollars of investment in infra sector but we don’t have a constitutional bill or act to regulate engineer’s profession. Every Tom and Dick graduating out of engineering colleges considers himself to be a bridge and building engineer without going through a rigorous internship and practice under an experienced senior engineer. Contrast this to developed countries where no one gets a license until he has practiced the profession under a licensed engineer for 4 – 8 years and only after passing a professional engineer’s exam. This assures that the people to whom the responsibility of preserving the lives is entrusted possess some minimum qualification.

On the governance and political arena, the project implementing agencies don’t have technical capacity to oversee the quality of work that is being produced by contractor’s engineer. They rely on other consultants or university teachers to get the designs approved. I have respect for university professors for their teaching skills and research but don’t have confidence that they are capable of catching errors in real life projects, neither they have time to spend and do a thorough review of the contractors design. Implementing agencies wash their hand saying that they have got design approved by this college professor or that. But the fact is teaching and engineering design are two different world. A mechanical engineering professor can teach his students, how a motorcycle works but cannot fix his broken motorcycle on his own, he has to go to an engineer or technician. Again, in developed countries, if a professor wants to review or approve a plan he too has to have a professional engineer’s license for which he has to pass the exam and practice under someone more experienced than him.

Urgent need of this hour is, as a society and nation we have to step up to push our legislators to bring up the engineer’s bill and pass it. Otherwise, yesterday it was Delhi Metro, Today it is Kolkata and tomorrow it will be Mumbai or some other city. We will be killed or rather murdered like helpless animals.

*Kamlesh Kumar, P.E., S.E. , Senior Bridge Engineer. Chicago, USA.