You are absolutely right. Initially army may be given the work to coordinate and conduct ground work while the experts will do the designing and construction of bridge itself. being in the nucleus, army engineers will have a unique opportunity to oversee the process and will get a on job training. This itself will be a million dollar achievement.
Bangladesh Govt is planning to raise a special brigade comprising one engr battalion and two infantry battalions.A good step.
Before I die, I want to see Bangladesh Army (Engineers) is competing international bid to construct huge structure (bridge/road/bldng) which will be much more complex than Padma Bridge.
As some one said, Everything has a start point...
Your ideas are generally good. But, the design and construction job training must be given to private engineering design as well as construction companies of the country and not to BA.
It is the solemn duty of the government to nurture engineers in the private sector. Every developed country did this. Thai govt has nurtured Ital-Thai construction company which will construct the Dhaka elevated expressway. How about these steps to nurture the locals?
1) Let the govt award the design job to a
foreign company (A).
2) Let also the R&H deptt. assign a
local design company (B) with not so deep experience in design.
3) Under the contract with the BD govt. the foreign
Company A shall submit the criteria for the design of foundations as well as structures to the local
company B instead of submitting the same directly to the R&H.
4)
The Company A shall similarly provide all the relevant data, soil investigation reports, design calculation papers and design/shop drawings to the
local Company B instead of submitting the same directly to the R&H.
There are hundreds of other things in the design stage and thousands of things at the construction stage that cannot be described here. However, the foreign
design Company A and foreign
construction company C shall be obliged to submit all the relevant information to the local
design company B and the local
construction company D respectively.
The local
Companies B and D shall be obliged to check these documents and ask for corrections/revisions to the foreign companies wherever needed, and shall submit the documents to the R&H for its approval.
This is how the local companies will come to know the procedure to design, and procedure and steps taken to do the construction.
However, I believe Padma Bridge design and construction is not a child's play, although SHW and that Muhith tend to think that way. So, I would like the training of the local
companies B and D be conducted first in smaller bridge projects to be designed and constructed by foreign Contractors.
When the
companies B and D gather a certain level of experience, only then they can be assigned to a large project like Padma Bridge.