The Construction Development Agency (BPK) of the Ministry of Public Works (MPW) Indonesia recently hosted an Expert Panel Workshop on Transparency in the Construction Sector in Indonesia. The purpose was to outline issues and current initiatives for promoting transparency in public works construction in Indonesia and to introduce CoST as a potential resource or partner in these efforts.

Jointly organized by BPK, the National Construction Services Development Board (LPJK), the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the Institute of Technology Bandung (ITB), and supported by the Australian Aid-funded Indonesia Infrastructure Initiative (IndII), the workshop was attended by 25 individuals drawn from the public works sector and academia.

BPK is convinced that more needs to be done to make the construction industry more efficient, so as to raise the reputation and integrity of the industry and reduce the risk premium. The importance of transparency for competition was repeatedly stressed and participants were very eager to discover how CoST might contribute.

Prof George Ofori (Deputy Chair, CoST Board) and Dr. Bill Paterson (CoST IS and IndII adviser) explained the aims and development of the CoST initiative, outlined the key processes – multi-stakeholder engagement, disclosure, assurance and monitoring – as well as the steps involved in establishing a national CoST programme.

During the discussion it emerged that much project data is currently available in the government’s e-Procurement and e-Monitoring systems, which could be accessed centrally through PusData, the Ministry of Public Works centre for information management and data processing. There is also an existing partnership of BPK with the Department of Statistics for gathering and evaluating statistics on the industry. These existing mechanisms could be upgraded to incorporate the CoST disclosure standard. IndII support for Bina Marga (Directorate-General of Highways (DGH)) under the technical assistance for Improved National Roads Program Delivery could help facilitate and implement these upgrades.

It became evident from the discussions that there is a strong interest for CoST in Indonesia. BPK and MPW are currently developing a work plan and next steps to explore the potential for implementing CoST.