Page 16 - ASTEC 29 JULY 2015

Green Corridor
preparations is a

POSITIVE EXPERIENCE

for DOW

CONTINUING the Green Corridor process Cabinet Mike Eman 3LOCAL
II will give a presentation containing all necessary information
regarding the Green Corridor to all institutions taking part in the
project. DOW has played an important role since the Government
gave the orders to implement the plan that has been on stand-by for
30 years already. “After going through many training sessions DOW
is now ready to implement the project.” It was an extremely positive
experience for the department and they now feel completely ready
and feel as if this project will train them to implement future public
projects better.

The steps taken to implement the Green Corridor will be used
to implement the Watty Vos Boulevard since they are both PPP
(Private Public Partnership) projects. “DOW is thinking of applying
part of the gained experience on other projects. We want to increase
our level to a higher level than before.” Swinda Dijkhoff from DOW
announced.

Swinda Dijkhoff currently serves as the Department of Public
Service’s project leader. She has worked at DOW for 18 years now.
She is tasked with designing roads and planning the implementation
of the project. Dijkhoff serves as technical council in the Green
Corridor project; she handled some utility service aspects.
“Utility was a challenge due to the different networks.” Dijkhoff
said.

She managed to reach an agreement with all the companies involved
in the project. Another challenge in the Green Corridor development
is the legal aspect. Dijkhoff explained that conditions that apply to
the PPP were not known since the concept was new to Aruba. The
personnel received training on how to compose conditions based
on the functional system. This system emphasizes accomplishing
certain requirements.

Aruba received assistance from Rijkswaterstaat and Price
Waterhouse Coopers on technical matters, financial matters and
legal matters. This assistance included courses and personal
training of the Public Service Department, so they can learn how to
better execute projects.

“Jossy Kock is the leader of the execution group along with 5 other
DOW officials.” Dijkhoff admits that it wasn’t easy to change their
work system, since it has existed for many years already, but now
they have more potential of growing. “Usually you often check how
a project is going, but now we are going to take a step back and
leave the responsibility to the contractor and if the contractor does
not comply with the requirements it is up to him to fix that.”

We also learned how to deal with closing a road like what steps to
take and what information to share with the public. “All of this has
helped us to improve and develop.” Dijkhoff concluded.

ARUBA TRAVELLER - Wednesday, July 29 2015