I am back again to my favorite topic, the Tacloban Airport Development Project of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP). There are new developments which may not be earth-shaking but are worth noting.
Headlining the news is the announcement that the Tacloban Airport New Terminal Building, which can seat 1,600 departing passengers, will open in 2026, but the first international flight will not be possible until 2028.
This is already a big leap from today’s capacity of 600 passengers. Also, the new terminal building will have three bays or tubes. As many as ten planes can be parked at the same time, from the current four.
The construction of two taxiways at either end of the runway is already being planned and will be constructed by 2026. This will facilitate landings and take-offs.
Although the construction of the new terminal and its facilities is already delayed, CAAP now has the confidence to set those target completion dates.
But wait, before those target dates are reached what will happen now until those years?
Phase I will be completed by end of May 2024, after a delay of two years. Phase II (which will cost one Billion Pesos} was awarded to Octagon Concrete Solution Inc. with a construction period of 720 days. It appears that Octagon is no longer owned by the same family that owns MAC Builders. It was transformed from a single proprietorship to a corporation, as reported in the recent Problem-Solving Session of the Regional Project Monitoring Council. It has a Board of Directors that does not include its previous owners thought to be the prominent Chua’s of Ormoc City.
Did the ownership really change or is this a way of curtailing or going over bidding regulations? Data from the Securities and Exchange Commission will reveal what happened here. The law prohibits CAAP from awarding a project to a contractor that gave them problems in project implementation. Further, from a legal standpoint, with the apparent change in ownership there is no more corporate veil that must be pierced as I suggested in a previous column.
After Phase II is completed, the DPWH will take-over from CAAP as Implementing Agency and take charge of executing the 1.5 billion Phase III.
We can recall that CAAP gave Phase I (which cost 760 million pesos) three variation orders with a Variation Order No. 3 that turned a negative slippage of thirty percent to zero in a matter of 30 days. This change enabled MAC Builders to recover the delay and present itself as being on track when the fact is that the project is delayed for at least 700 days.
During last week’s meeting, this columnist had the chance to remind the representative of Octagon to learn from the lessons of MAC Builders and not delay the project any further. But to achieve this on schedule implementation CAAP must do its job by monitoring and supervising the project properly. As suggested by the representative of DPWH, CAAP should follow a monthly accomplishment reporting and the project’s PERT-CPM diagram.
The airport is a key project that will speed up the development of Eastern Visayas. If CAAP and the DPWH falters, if they are not able to recover lost ground, so will the region. This project is that crucial.
It is not very apparent, but the fact is that every year the project is delayed, around 5 billion pesos in tourist receipts are lost or not earned by the Eastern Visayas region.
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