TO ADDRESS years of delayed infrastructure projects in Cebu City, Mayor Nestor Archival said they will strengthen the City Government's engineering workforce and may tap private consultants to prepare technical documents after the Commission on Audit (COA) found that manpower shortages had slowed the implementation of development projects.
Archival said the City is working to address the backlog of projects carried over from previous years while pursuing long-term measures to ensure the Department of Engineering and Public Works (DEPW) can meet the city's infrastructure needs.
According to the mayor, one immediate priority is hiring additional engineers to reinforce the department's technical capacity.
Increasing the number of technical personnel would speed up the preparation of project requirements and improve project supervision, he added.
Aside from expanding the workforce, the City is also preparing to outsource the preparation of programs of work and estimates if the DEPW proves unable to handle the volume of pending projects.
Archival clarified that outsourcing will not immediately resolve the delays because the government procurement process requires several months to complete.
“If we find that they really cannot handle it, then we will outsource,” he said, adding that preparations for outsourcing will begin while city engineers continue working on the existing backlog, allowing both efforts to proceed simultaneously.
Backlog of development projects
Archival acknowledged that many delayed projects were funded in 2024 and 2025 but remained unfinished when he assumed office last year.
He said one of the challenges inherited by his administration was the large number of Local Development Fund (LDF) projects that had yet to move forward despite having available funding.
“During the time I assumed office, many projects funded under the LDF had not been attended to,” he said.
The mayor's statement came after COA, in its 2025 audit report, identified the DEPW's limited manpower as one factor behind the city's slow implementation of infrastructure projects.
COA recommendations
The audit showed that Cebu City used only P344.45 million, or 7.98 percent, of the P4.32 billion available under its 20 percent Development Fund in 2025.
The report said 41 infrastructure projects worth a combined P2.11 billion failed to proceed as scheduled.
COA said the delays resulted from procurement setbacks, inadequate project readiness, implementation deficiencies and the engineering department's limited capacity to prepare technical documents and supervise multiple projects at the same time.
To address the problem, the commission recommended that the city consider outsourcing the preparation of programs of work and estimates in accordance with Republic Act 9184, the Government Procurement Reform Act, whenever the workload exceeds the DEPW's in-house capacity.
State auditors said the move would allow city engineers to focus on other technical responsibilities while helping speed up delayed infrastructure projects.
CCMC project
The audit findings also echoed concerns previously raised over the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC), one of the city's largest ongoing infrastructure projects.
In a separate section of the report, COA said the city had spent P1.13 billion on the hospital project despite engineering deficiencies, documentation issues, contract concerns and years of construction delays.
Archival earlier acknowledged that portions of the hospital may have to be demolished and rebuilt after technical inspections identified substandard work from previous construction phases.
The mayor has also expressed support for hiring an independent project management consultant to oversee the remaining phases of the CCMC project, saying the decade-old undertaking has become increasingly difficult to manage after passing through several contractors. (CAV)