Assessment of present procurement process of private owned rural piped water supply implemented by Department of Public Health Engineering (DPHE) based on key performance indicators (KPI)

Abstract

Rural piped water supply system is a new concept for providing safe water to the rural people. Water supply system of Bangladesh is quite challenging due to presence of arsenic and salinity in ground water, low water level and highly varied availability of surface water throughout the year. Operation and management of the system is the most challenging factor among all. The government organization does not have sufficient financial and administrative support to operate and manage water supply systems. A Build, Own, Operate, Transfer (BOOT) model was developed and introduced under a project of DPHE namely Bangladesh Water Supply Program Project (BWSPP). However, the water supply systems developed under this project are not running successfully. Only 4 out of 21 schemes are expecting to get back their investment within 18 years. All other schemes are running without having any profit. The procurement process for rural piped water supply under this project was different than usual procedure. The sponsors who were supposed to build supply systems select the location. There were no competitions for a particular scheme. From the lesson learned from BWSPP, the later project Bangladesh Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project (BRWSSP) took initiative to ensure competitiveness in the procurement process. Out of 45 KPIs that were used by CPTU to evaluate the procurement process, 25 KPI were used to evaluate the efficiency, competitiveness, compliance and transparency of the procurement process considered for the study. The result shown that still people working in water supply sector not aware about the importance of procurement process in implementing PPP model. The transparency and competitiveness was ensured in the procurement process. However, there are still improvements required in ensuring compliance and efficiency in the procurement processes of rural piped water supply system.