Notes on the beat
MANILA, Philippines — Bollards are supposed to prevent vehicles from crashing into pedestrians, but this was not the case in the recent car crash at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 1.
In December 2018, NAIA regulator Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) announced it was looking for a contractor that would install security bollards for all terminals of the airport.
Based on MIAA’s procurement monitoring report, the project was led by the Office of the Assistant General Manager for Engineering’s Development and Planning Department.
The MIAA detailed the project as supply and installation of security bollards at the curbside area of NAIA Terminals 1, 2, 3 and 4.
The agency needed the bollards to prevent any possibility of hostile vehicle intrusion into the terminals.
The MIAA had allocated P8.03 million for the project, but lone bidder Kontrak Enterprises said it could supply and install the bollards for P8.01 million. With this, the agency was able to save at least P20,000 in awarding the project to the company.
The MIAA opened and evaluated the bid on Feb. 7, 2019, and issued the notice of award to Kontrak Enterprises on Feb. 28, with the project contract signed on March 27 and the notice to proceed released on March 28.
Kontrak Enterprises was given up to 120 days to complete the project, and the MIAA declared it finished in exactly 120 days on July 26, 2019.
The project went through standard bidding that government contracts have to comply with before they are awarded to a contractor.
So what went wrong with the bollards that failed to hold up against the Ford Everest that crashed into the departure area of Terminal 1 last May 4? Had the bollards served their purpose, two lives would have been saved, including that of a five-year-old.
The STAR reviewed the pre-bidding conference and opening of bids for the bollard project. The videos of these bidding procedures can still be viewed on the Facebook page of MIAA.
The project failed to receive any bidders when it was first processed on Jan. 8, 2019, mainly because the installation of bollards was initially deemed an infrastructure work.
Given this, bidders would have to obtain a license from the Philippine Contractors Accreditation Board (PCAB), which certifies the financial and technical competency of construction firms.
During the initial bidding, a member of MIAA’s bids and awards committee (BAC) said that the project must be hurried because it is one of the agency’s commitments to the US Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
The TSA looked into the security protocols of NAIA in 2018, between Sept. 26 and Dec. 5, and submitted reform proposals to MIAA. Former MIAA general manager Ed Monreal vowed to deliver the security corrections by 2019.
During the first bidding, members of the MIAA’s BAC explained that the project was labeled as infrastructure work because it would not only involve the supply, but also the installation, of the bollards. As such, it would really require the bidders to have a PCAB license.
A member said the project can be realigned as a supply work to remove the PCAB requirement, to which another member of the BAC replied: “Isusuksok lang ‘yon [bollards], infra na?”
The member who suggested realigning it as a supply work said bollards would really come from distributors of stainless steel, noting that some of them find it difficult to be certified by PCAB.
The BAC held a second pre-bid conference on Jan. 24, 2019, where two companies attended, one of which is Kontrak Enterprises, expressing their interest in bidding for the project.
Two weeks later, on Feb. 7, 2019, the BAC reconvened to process the bollard project again. Although two entities attended the pre-bid conference, the project picked up only one bid, from Kontrak Enterprises, which was represented by a certain Allan Soriano.
Kontrak Enterprises presented a prior work of bollard installation, worth P5.73 million, finished in 2016. The company, based in NBBS, Navotas City, said its net financial contracting capacity (NFCC) at that time was P13.7 million.
When bidding for a government project, companies have to report their NFCC, which is current assets minus current liabilities, to show they can fund the project without compromising quality or delaying the timeline.
At that time, Kontrak Enterprise was operating with a financial capacity of just barely P6 million meeting the contract price of the bollards, which is P8.03 million.
Kontrak Enterprises committed a warranty certificate of two years from installation, and reported that its materials passed the tests of the Department of Science and Technology’s Metal Industry Research and Development Center.
Last, Kontrak Enterprises submitted a bid amount of P8.01 million, lower by more than P20,000 against the project cost of P8.03 million. All of this was enough for the BAC to award the project to Kontrak Enterprises.
It remains unclear whether the BAC still required Kontrak Enterprises to show a PCAB license to qualify for the bollards project. It remains unanswered, too, what kind of integrity tests MIAA ran on the bollards, or if the agency did any at all, after installation.
What is clear is that Kontrak Enterprises was responsible for supplying and installing 60 bollards in the departure area and 53 in the arrival area of Terminal 1; 25 in the departure level and 64 in the arrival level of Terminal 2; 47 in the departure bays and 35 in the arrival bays of Terminal 3; and 13 in Terminal 4.
NAIA is no longer operated and maintained by MIAA now, as these tasks were transferred to the New NAIA Infrastructure Corp. (NNIC) last year as part of the airport’s P170.6-billion upgrade.
The NNIC is conducting an audit of all the bollards across NAIA with the goal of determining if they require reinforcements, such as deeper foundations and structural changes.
The controversy on the bollards’ integrity has reached Malacañang, with President Marcos ordering an investigation into the procurement process of the items. He will be informed, for sure, that Kontrak Enterprises is still a contractor for NAIA as of 2024.
The airport is a place where goodbyes, most of the time, are temporary. The airport, however, is not a place where you die on a warm Sunday morning, especially when pieces of metal worth P8 million are supposed to protect your body from a raging SUV.