The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation’s Road and Building Committee has tightened the process for appointing design consultants, third-party inspection agencies and project management consultants, directing officials to use empanelled agencies except in specially approved cases.
The committee’s decision follows concerns that agencies outside the municipal corporation’s approved panels were being assigned work at higher prices. According to a report by Gujarat Samachar, any proposal to appoint a non-empanelled agency will now require the reasons to be placed before the relevant committee and approved before the work is assigned.
The revised process applies to consultancy and project oversight work connected with roads, bridges and municipal buildings. The corporation uses design consultants to prepare project designs, third-party inspection agencies to check construction quality and project management consultants to support project supervision and implementation.
The Road and Building Committee chairman said the corporation already prepares panels of agencies for all three categories of work. However, the committee found that agencies not included in those panels were also being given assignments. Under the new instruction, such appointments will be considered only in special cases and after a proposal with adequate justification is submitted to the committee.
The move places the empanelment system at the centre of the corporation’s spending controls. Empanelment is intended to create a pre-screened pool of agencies from which civic departments can obtain specialised services. The committee’s direction means that bypassing this pool will no longer be treated as a routine administrative decision, based on the report.
The corporation is also examining the creation of an in-house design cell. At present, it hires external agencies for design consultancy, third-party inspection and project management services for several development works. The committee has said that these appointments result in expenditure running into lakhs of rupees.
The proposed design unit would bring at least part of this work within the municipal corporation. The committee has instructed the municipal commissioner to begin the process of establishing the cell. The plan is intended to reduce dependence on external agencies, lower consultancy costs and improve oversight of municipal projects.
The committee chairman also linked the proposed in-house unit to construction quality and officer accountability. With technical design and monitoring capacity inside the corporation, responsibility for project decisions and supervision could be identified more directly, according to the statement reported by Gujarat Samachar.
The decision does not immediately eliminate the use of private consultants or inspection agencies. Instead, it changes the approval route for agencies outside the established panels and begins a separate process to develop internal technical capacity. The next steps are the committee-level scrutiny of exceptional appointments and action by the municipal commissioner on establishing the design cell.
