Testing lab seen as vital for road construction, maintenance

THE Department of Works and Highways should focus on maintaining and establishing the material testing laboratories (labs) and accredit them to ISO 9001, says executive director of network planning and design standards Gibson Holemba.
ISO 9001 is the international standard that specifies requirements for a quality management system (QMS).
Holemba said if the department wanted to see quality work in the maintenance of works that were carried out in major highways or in sub-national programmes, it should focus on maintaining and establishing the material testing labs.
He said PNG did not receive the accreditation programme and so most labs in the provincial centres did not have those.
“If we want to maintain the working equipment in the long run, we need to focus on maintaining the PTS mechanical labs as the labs were run down,” he said.
“We are purchasing equipment but the laboratory that will sustain those equipment are not established properly.”
He also said that the department could not maintain the workshops as it did not have basic equipment to test and do troubleshooting to identify problems.
He said the Department of Works had a lab in Vanimo but it did not have the necessary equipment.
He recommended the department maintained mechanical workshops and have a programme for maintenance of workshops so it could help maintain equipment that were supplied under its capacity building programme.
Japanese International Corporation System team leader maintenance, engineering and planning, Koishikawa Kazuharu, said the problem was concentrated on the BTS machine.
Kazuharu said BTS machines were old and outdated.
However, Gideon Ali said the department should establish a mechanical workshop and update it to Japanese standards in terms of sustainability.
“Bring those technologies in Japan and expound in our material testing laboratories,” he said.