For the construction phase, an independent consultant was employed by both the Procuring Authority and the Project Company to review, monitor, and certify the milestones. Throughout the construction phase, the Procuring Authority regularly monitored, inspected and evaluated the quality of the works undertaken by the Project Company to ensure that the road was designed, constructed and equipped in accordance with the contract requirements.

In the operations phase, the Project Company is required to comply with the minimum Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for operation and maintenance stipulated by the Procuring Authority. There are over 15 KPIs for the expressway operation and over 15 KPIs for road maintenance. Some of the KPIs include; ensuring that queuing length of 10 vehicles at the toll gates does not exceed 20 minutes during peak hours, and maintaining the transaction capacity of the toll plaza at a minimum of 400 vehicles per hour per lane for manual or mixed booths, and 900 vehicles per hour per lane for the express gates.

Other KPIs include:

•  Permanent presence of the traffic safety and control system (i.e. patrol system, security surveillance system, immediate response to accidents or vehicle breakdown, etc.)

•  Regarding road quality, surface roughness should not exceed three units based on the international roughness index (IRI)

•  In cases of road damages, the repair of pavements or markings should not exceed the prescribed time

The KPIs are monitored by both the Project Company and the Procuring Authority during the operations phase with no involvement of an independent consultant. However, the final approval of compliance with KPIs is the responsibility of the Procuring Authority. Penalties apply for the Project Company if the KPIs are not met. So far, the KPIs seem to be working well and there have not been any complaints on the functionality of the KPIs from the Project Company or the Procuring Authority.

Minimum performance standards and specifications are generally monitored by the Procuring Authority. The Toll Regulatory Board also conducts monitoring activities for compliance with regulations on toll systems and facilities. While the Project Company is currently meeting all the agreed KPIs, it can be noted that during the defects liability period, i.e. the one-year period after construction completion during which the contractor must remedy defects as identified by the Procuring Authority prior to the acceptance of construction works, a few KPIs (i.e. road roughness and repair of the road drainage system) were not complied with. All these performance failures have since been corrected.