Procurement for the construction of water, sanitation and hygiene facilities – resources
Download
To ensure the quality of water, sanitation and hygiene infrastructure, comprehensive, accurate and detailed contracts – combined with adequate construction supervision – are essential. Robust procurement processes and strong contracts are also vital to ensure the quality of our work and, as such, are part of our 32 Quality Programme Standards.
Robust contracts provide clear instructions to contractors, and provide a mechanism for holding them to account in case of any deviations or later problems. However, national construction standards are typically designed for large construction projects and so are often inappropriate for relatively small water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities, and the kinds of technologies we use.
We have therefore developed a series of resources to help teams prepare robust contracts that are appropriate for WASH projects. These resources can be quickly tailored to individual projects and ensure that important details are not missed.
The resources include:
- Model construction works contract and template
- Model technical specification for construction works for small rural WASH projects
- Guidance for procurement and contract management of mechanised drilling services
- Framework for assessing strength of processes for procurement and contract management of drilling services
Model construction works contract and template
A contract agreement includes clear descriptions of the scope of the work, and clauses to ensure it is correctly implemented. Having strong contracts protects us and the contractor, and ensures the quality of our work.
This template should be contextualised for each country and project.
Model technical specification for construction works for small rural WASH projects
A technical specification is a set of clauses setting out the quality of the materials and workmanship expected. Without a specification, it is difficult to hold contractors to account as it provides a legally enforceable basis for providing feedback to contractors on where they have deviated from what was expected. This, as well as ensuring supervision of the work, is crucial to ensure high quality construction work is delivered.
The clauses included in this model relate to civil and minor structural work used for water and sanitation facilities. This template should be contextualised for each country and project.
Model technical specifications for construction works for small rural WASH projects (DOCX)
Guidance for procurement and contract management of mechanised drilling services
Processes for procurement and contract management of drilling services have a direct impact on the quality of work carried out by drilling contractors. Groundwater research such as UpGro has identified that drilling quality plays a major role in determining the sustainability of boreholes and water supply services. With support from WaterAid and UNICEF, the Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN) has led an initiative to professionalise borehole drilling, which has led to the publication of several guidance documents (RWSN) and a UNICEF toolkit.
Our country teams implement drilling projects in 21 countries across South Asia, and East, Southern Africa and West Africa. Our country teams lead the implementation of their projects in accordance with local contexts and norms. So, in some cases, local NGO partners, government partners or local service providers lead the drilling procurement and contracting process. In others, the procurement and contracting process is led by our country teams.
This document aims to provide best practice guidance on the procurement and contract management of drilling services within the context of our country teams, and draws heavily on existing RWSN and UNICEF guidance.
Guidance for procurement and contract management for mechanised drilling services (PDF)
Annexes are available on request. Please contact our technical advisors on [email protected]
Framework for assessing strength of processes for procurement and contract management of drilling services
Professionalising processes for the procurement and contract management for drilling services has a direct impact on the quality and sustainability of work by drilling contractors.
In 2021, we undertook a review of our internal processes across 10 countries in this area to identify good practice, gaps, and opportunities to strengthen practices, recognising the importance of professionalising these processes.
Countries were given a rating on a scale of one to five on how they performed at a number of steps in the processes. The results were not used to assess or compare performance between countries, but to be used as a spring board for identifying and improving our internal processes, with the ultimate goal of providing more sustainable services to communities and showcasing best practice for our influencing work.
Country programme staff were asked to submit examples of documents from various stages of the procurement and contract management processes, which were analysed against the framework. Follow-up interviews were used to gather any information not collected by the desk review.
This assessment framework can be used by other organisations would like to do a similar exercise.
Top image: Handpump mechanics uninstall a borehole to make a technical evaluation of it in Masindi district, Uganda.
