Skip to main content

Ethics and Financial Integrity in Highway Project Management

Billions of dollars are invested each year in highway construction and maintenance projects across the world. Up to 5% of these funds are estimated to be lost on account of insufficient ethical and financial oversight. Highway Agencies and tendering authorities are particularly at risk. Implementing financial integrity principles stretches public budgets further and is beneficial to the relation with private sector contractors. According to the World Bank, the most common forms of wrongdoing are collusion
June 18, 2012 Read time: 2 mins

Billions of dollars are invested each year in highway construction and maintenance projects across the world. Up to 5% of these funds are estimated to be lost on account of insufficient ethical and financial oversight. Highway Agencies and tendering authorities are particularly at risk. Implementing financial integrity principles stretches public budgets further and is beneficial to the relation with private sector contractors.

According to the 2332 World Bank, the most common forms of wrongdoing are collusion among firms bidding on a project and fraud and corruption in the execution of the resulting contract. Collusion, bribery, kickbacks and overcharging all affect the financial viability of a project. When construction materials are substituted and quality controls bypassed, it is the useful life of the road and the safety of the user which are at stake.
Encouraging ethical project management practices has long been an important topic for the 713 International Road Federation. Taking a further step, 2462 IRF is now offering the first in a series of certified training course dedicated to the issue of fraud & corruption on highway projects
Led by Michael Avery, an international expert in financial integrity on transportation infrastructure projects, the course will describe the extent of fraud and corruption, develop specific risk profiles and detail available internal control instruments. “There is good and bad news”, noted Michael Avery “The bad news is that fraud & corruption exist at all phases of highway development. The good news is that effective tools have now been developed to greatly reduce its impact”. The course will examine practical case studies, apply lessons learned and encourage delegates to develop organisation-level action plans.

Please take a moment to consider the impacts of unethical practices within your industry and sign up for the course by contacting Magid Elabyad at %$Linker: Email 0 0 0 oLinkExternal [email protected] IRF News false mailto:[email protected] true false%>

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Call for Abstracts, for IRF Europe & Central Asia Regional Congress
    March 9, 2015
    Istanbul is often said to be where Europe meets Asia, geographically and culturally. This September the great city will also be the focus of the International Road Federation’s 1st Europe & Central Asia Regional Congress. The congress will be an exceptional opportunity for anyone, especially from Europe and Asia, involved in major road projects to connect and network with ministers, road agency heads and local government leaders. But time is running out to be among the prestigious speakers and presenters at
  • Show of Strength for Asphaltica-Samoter 2014
    May 14, 2014
    This year’s 50th anniversary of the first edition of Samoter in Verona, Italy, could mark the start of a construction equipment sales’ renaissance for a nation with a rich construction equipment manufacturing heritage. Guy Woodford reports It’s been a tough few years for the Italian construction equipment manufacturing industry. A difficult domestic and wider European sales market coupled with a challenging European economic climate has created something of a perfect storm. But many Italian and other Eur
  • IRF Geneva carries out road statistics seminar
    June 28, 2013
    IRF Geneva has carried out a successful webinar on World Road Statistics for Beginners - Techniques and Methods. Participants from all over the world joined in to the key messages and techniques from this webinar. This addressed the core characteristics of raw data brought together in the annual World Road Statistics report, which is one of IRF’s flagship projects. Published since 1964, this publication remains the single comprehensive source of data for the international road, traffic and transport sectors
  • AM4INFRA aims to develop EU asset management framework
    November 7, 2017
    The first European asset management framework package to improve decision-making, including cross-border asset management will be available in August 2018. The framework is being developed by AM4INFRA, a two-year Horizon 2020 project that is supported by the Conference of European Directors of Roads (CEDR) and ProRail, the Dutch national rail agency. H2020 is European Union Research and Innovation programme to boost the competitiveness and efficiencies of EU organisations. Funding for projects is nearly €80