Philippine Preventive Maintenance Crisis: Planned Obsolescence Without Saying It
By Karl Garcia
1. Are Flood Control Failures Just the Tip of the Iceberg?
Recent controversies over flood control projects that fail after only a few years raise a disturbing question:
Are these failures accidents, incompetence, corruption — or the result of a system that does not reward durability?
In the Philippines, infrastructure often appears to have a short functional lifespan, whether in:
- Flood control dikes and drainage systems
- Roads and bridges
- Rail systems
- Government buildings
- Ports and airports
- Irrigation canals
- Public housing
- Power and water utilities
The pattern is consistent:
- Project built
- Maintenance neglected
- Failure occurs
- Emergency repair funded
- New project approved
- Cycle repeats
This resembles planned obsolescence, not in design specs, but in institutional behavior.
2. Planned Obsolescence vs Institutional Obsolescence
In consumer electronics, planned obsolescence means products are designed to fail so new ones can be sold.
In public infrastructure, the equivalent is:
| Consumer electronics | Philippine infrastructure |
|---|---|
| Product designed to wear out | Project built without lifecycle planning |
| Replacement drives profit | Reconstruction drives contracts |
| Warranty period short | Maintenance period underfunded |
| Repair discouraged | Preventive maintenance ignored |
| Marketing favors new models | Politics favors new projects |
No engineer will admit to designing failure.
But the system rewards:
- New CAPEX
- Not maintenance
- Not durability
- Not lifecycle efficiency
Result: Institutionalized obsolescence.
3. The CAPEX Bias: Why Governments Prefer Building Over Maintaining
Public budgeting strongly favors new projects.
In the Philippine system:
- New infrastructure → visible → politically rewarding
- Maintenance → invisible → politically useless
This creates what may be called the CAPEX bias.
Common pattern
- Congress funds construction
- Maintenance placed under MOOE
- MOOE cut first when budgets tight
- Assets deteriorate
- New funding requested
This explains why:
- Roads are rebuilt instead of resurfaced
- Flood control upgraded instead of maintained
- Rail systems collapse before overhaul
- Government buildings decay before renovation
It is cheaper politically to rebuild than to maintain.
4. The MOOE Trap and Deferred Liability
As your essay correctly notes, maintenance falls under:
Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses (MOOE)
MOOE problems:
- Smaller allocation
- Easier to cut
- Harder to defend politically
- Often delayed
- Sometimes diverted
But infrastructure obeys physics, not politics.
Deferred maintenance leads to:
- Faster wear
- Structural damage
- Higher repair cost
- Safety risks
- Loss of service
Engineering rule of thumb:
₱1 not spent on preventive maintenance can become ₱5–₱10 in repairs later.
This is not theory. It is observed worldwide.
5. Flood Control as a Case Study
Flood control failures often reveal the same systemic issues:
Problems seen repeatedly
- Undersized drainage
- Poor desilting maintenance
- Encroachment not enforced
- Pumps not serviced
- Dikes not inspected
- Siltation ignored
- Contracts fragmented
Flood control is not a one-time project.
It requires:
- Regular dredging
- Monitoring
- Inspection
- Clearing of waterways
- Pump maintenance
- Land-use enforcement
Without preventive maintenance, even the best design will fail.
So the issue is not always corruption.
Often it is:
A system built to construct, not to sustain.
6. The MRT-3 Example: A Perfect Illustration
The case of
MRT-3
is one of the clearest examples.
Problems included:
- Contract instability
- Delayed payments
- Multiple maintenance providers
- Political interference
- Spare parts shortages
- Deferred overhaul
Result:
- Frequent breakdowns
- Reduced capacity
- Safety concerns
- Public frustration
When proper maintenance was restored, performance improved dramatically.
Lesson:
The problem was never the train. It was the maintenance system.
7. Contractor Fragmentation and the Incentive Problem
Maintenance contracts often fail because they are:
- Short-term
- Lowest-bid
- Politically influenced
- Frequently changed
Preventive maintenance requires:
- Stability
- Long-term planning
- Technical continuity
- Data history
- Skilled personnel
If contracts change every year, preventive maintenance becomes impossible.
This produces the illusion of incompetence, when the real issue is institutional instability.
8. Cultural Factor: Reactive Governance
Another dimension is cultural and political.
The Philippines tends to act after crisis.
Examples:
- Flood → dredging after flood
- Train breakdown → repair after breakdown
- Bridge collapse → inspection after collapse
- Power outage → upgrade after outage
Preventive action has no headline.
Crisis response does.
So governance becomes reactive.
9. Is There Corruption? Sometimes. But Not Always.
Not every failure is corruption.
Possible causes include:
- Poor design standards
- Weak supervision
- Budget cuts
- Lack of technical staff
- Fragmented agencies
- Procurement delays
- Political turnover
But corruption can amplify the problem when:
- Substandard materials used
- Overpricing reduces quality
- Maintenance funds diverted
- Projects rushed before elections
The result still looks like planned obsolescence.
Even if not planned, it becomes systemic.
10. The Real Issue: No Lifecycle Asset Management
Advanced countries manage infrastructure using:
- Asset inventories
- Condition monitoring
- Scheduled maintenance
- Lifecycle costing
- Digital tracking
- Ring-fenced budgets
The Philippines often manages infrastructure as:
- Project-based
- Not asset-based
This is the root problem.
11. What Must Change
Your recommendations are correct and should be strengthened.
1. Ring-fence maintenance budgets
Maintenance cannot be optional.
2. Require lifecycle costing for all projects
No project approved without 20–30 year maintenance plan.
3. Create national asset management system
Track condition of all public infrastructure.
4. Stabilize maintenance contracts
Avoid yearly contractor changes.
5. Professionalize engineering agencies
Reduce political interference.
6. Publish maintenance data publicly
Transparency creates discipline.
7. Treat maintenance as national security issue
Infrastructure failure affects economy, safety, defense.
12. Conclusion
Flood control failures are not isolated.
They may indeed be the tip of the iceberg.
The deeper problem is a system where:
- Building is rewarded
- Maintaining is neglected
- Budgets favor projects over upkeep
- Contracts favor short-term work
- Politics favors visibility over durability
This produces infrastructure that behaves as if it were designed to fail, even when it was not.
Until preventive maintenance becomes an institutional imperative,
the Philippines will continue to build what it cannot sustain — and rebuild what should never have failed.
The Society of Honor by Joe America 
As Jack Nicholson said what if this is as good as it gets
Unfortunately it is as worse as it gets when it comes to Building to last…for five years right in time for the next elections
“Until preventive maintenance becomes an institutional imperative,the Philippines will continue to build what it cannot sustain — and rebuild what should never have failed.” – Karl
I agree. I observed that growing up there in the 60s and 70s and it was a source of sadness for me. I remember when Villegas boasted about two fire boats in Manila Bay. I never even got a chance to see them. I remember when Manila boasted of a garbage incinerator. Lord only knows how long that hung around. I grew up in that sort of environment and thus as an adult, even here in the US, I tend not to spend much on maintenance of equipment and the home, I am ashamed to admit. Too much of “puede na” even in me.
As a wise man said aren’t we all. You are not alone.
Infrastructure projects follow the general process of any other project. These process steps are well-known and searchable, so I won’t go into it.
A very important concept in project management that I observed isn’t really discussed in the Philippines is the failure point.
Failure points that are more general across many project types are:
1.) Stakeholder buy-in is at-face only without adequate commitment
2.) Scope creep
3.) Poor contractor selection
4.) Insufficient contingency planning and funding
5.) Lack of independent design review
Failure points specific to infrastructure projects are:
1.) Inadequate subsurface investigation
2.) Insufficiency of after-completion routine inspection schedule
3.) Insufficiency of long-term maintenance plan and maintenance implementation
So there we have it, why Philippine infrastructure projects often fail. It’s not just preventative maintenance. Without good foundations built on a good plan, i.e. “building to last” the expected lifetime of the infrastructure, what is there to maintain?
Many thanks for this.
“What is a failure point?”
A failure point in projects is a specific, vulnerable component (of a project) whose failure causes the entire project to miss goals, overrun budgets, exceed timelines, or in catastrophic situations encounter complete project failure.
Any of the first 5 points listed above can cause complete project failure. Let’s think about Philippine projects and we may quickly realize that many Philippine projects exhibit more than 1 of the first 5 points. Thus complete failure.
Any of the latter 3 points describe above cause premature degradation of a completed project. Which also commonly happens in the Philippines. Thus complete failure as the infrastructure needed to be replaced well before the expected lifetime end.
Failure points and mitigations are not things that are discovered then “fixed” as one encounters it. In proper project planning the failure points and mitigations are developed by the PM, stakeholders and SMEs in the initial phases of project planning well before the project even starts. By the time contractors are brought in their only job is to follow the project plan to a tee.
Now I’ve heard the argument of “but the Filipino project manager was certified, licensed and capable.” No. The PM may have been certified and may have been licensed *but was not capable* as the PM was unable to identify and/or mitigate one or more failure points.
Whenever I took on PM contracts, once I had identified failure points and developed mitigations but immediate stakeholders did not want to address the issues raised, I’d immediately escalate the issue higher until the issues were resolved. If the issues are not resolved, I’d rather resign and walk out than to have my record tarnished with a failed project. Philippine culture which mixes in inappropriately personal relationships (e.g. PM being too friendly with contractors, stakeholders being too friendly with PM) that get in the way of broaching issues can also possibly be a problem in this regard.
Your write-up is correct, and when applied to the Philippine setting, the key insight is that the project life cycle is indeed taught in engineering schools, but the problem in the Philippines is not lack of knowledge — it is weak institutional enforcement of the life-cycle discipline after graduation. In most programs accredited under the Commission on Higher Education, students learn the basic cycle of initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, and closure through design subjects, feasibility studies, and engineering management courses, and top universities such as University of the Philippines Diliman, De La Salle University, Mapúa University, and University of Santo Tomas usually include capstone projects, cost estimates, scheduling, risk analysis, and sometimes systems engineering concepts that resemble the framework of the Project Management Institute and its PMBOK model; however, in real government infrastructure, the full life cycle is often broken by factors outside engineering control such as political changes, procurement constraints, lowest-bid rules, weak independent design review, insufficient geotechnical investigation, and lack of guaranteed maintenance funding, so projects may follow the life cycle on paper but not in practice. This gap explains why the Philippines can produce competent engineers yet still experience cost overruns, redesigns, early deterioration, and maintenance failures, because the system rewards project approval and construction more than long-term monitoring and upkeep, meaning the life-cycle mindset learned in school is not consistently carried through the institutions that plan, fund, build, and maintain public works.
hmm in my IT career (which never led me to getting any official PM certification like PRINCE or PMBOK, though I do know some basics like GANTT charts, resource planning, project stakeholder analysis and in the past decade I have learned a bit of agile though I wonder who really understands it yet much less is truly competent in it) I have seen PMs (though I have been de facto technical PM a lot of times I never was an official PM) who were certified (and some even had solid backgrounds on paper) who played totally by the book but somehow either lacked a deeper understanding of the problem domain itself OR weren’t willing or aware of the fact that they had to do their homework if they didn’t know enough AND listen to the domain experts – and project managers who had gotten their certifications way later but had learned a lot of their skills through experience and simply by paying attention.
A project manager I did look up to a lot because he brought a very difficult project I was in to completion did seem to have his structure from his background as a military reserve officer. He told us (from contractor side) for instance how we had planned too optimistically, and came with a story about how his unit planned supply chain convoys to include eventualities like flat tires or deer crossing the Autobahn, so they always had a time buffer. Sounds like the failure points you mentioned, though I hear that term for the first time, maybe it is similar to how we were taught risk management. List risks based on how likely they are and how big the impact can be. High likelihood or high impact always meant one had to plan for them, low likelihood and low impact meant they were not important. What is strange is that I saw a discussion on FB maybe over a decade ago by people I otherwise highly respect as professionals, treating an extremely high impact risk like a meltdown in the Bataan nuclear power plant based on the indeed relatively low risk (how often earthquakes do happen in Bataan, how far Bataan is from Manila – probably also wishfully thinking the wind doesn’t blow the wrong way, etc etc) that it would happen to justify their being in favor of turning it on. These were all highly competent people in their respective specializations, unable to apply themselves outside of them. Quite common in the Philippines.
About the wind blowing the wrong way, maybe even Eintein will say that after Chernobyl or Fukushima.
The discussion I think was a few years after Fukushima. While the German response to that was too careful the Filipinos I mentioned were overconfident.
I recall a post about cement falling from the Skyway and hitting a car below recently and comments that the driver could have seen and avoided the cement – well those are people who don’t understand the laws of physics and how even the near legendary senses of Manila drivers are not enough for so many dimensions. Though maybe the senses of Indian subcontinent drivers are nearly transcendental. I recall a vacation to Sri Lanka pre-tsunami where I was fascinated by how the Tamil driver of the SUV we sat in managed to drive through the crazy mix of vehicles, people and animals on some roads, almost as if Hindu gods guided him. Well maybe the “In God We Trust” of Filipino jeepney drivers is similar. Meanwhile German drivers trust Autobahn design thinking and 180-200 km/h isn’t uncommon.
I just watch a youtube on how to conserve gas straight from the (non) experts, the drivers then an expert was interviewed to quell the folk lore.
In a Risk Matrix a high impact risk is not necessarily a failure point, however a failure point is always a high impact risk.
Within the Risk Assessment process and Risk Scoring many risks are not obvious and can arise unexpectedly (e.g. unknowns), which is why a proper Risk Assessment is quite thorough and pulls in all relevant SMEs who have a breadth of institutional knowledge. A high impact risk is a potential risk that if it occurs, can cause severe damage to the project success, i.e. it is consequence-centric with a connected potential damage. Most risks can be mitigated with risk reduction (lowering the likelihood of a risk arising) or risk transfer (e.g. obtaining insurance against the risk). The plan to address Risk Mitigation is called a Risk Prevention Plan.
Failure points are high impact risks that are known and obvious and are related to the dependency between components. To express in simpler terms, a failure point is when dependencies break, which would cause a very severe failure that is usually catastrophic and irrecoverable. One can think about the many stalled and failed projects in the Philippines and once failure points are understood, it would be readily apparent that all those projects encountered one or more failure points. Not being able to see obvious risks would be considered project management malpractice in any other organization.
Within institutional knowledge there is explicit knowledge (what had been previously documented), but for Risk Assessment tacit (i.e. implicit) knowledge is much more important in identifying risks. Tacit knowledge includes stuff, often undocumented, like “how the system works,” best practices, and department cultural nuances, all gained through experience, not by reading documentation (SOPs, policies, knowledge bases). The collective institutional knowledge of SMEs are called Institutional Memory, something that also doesn’t really exist in the Philippines, which is probably why the Philippines often fails with projects. It is not enough to have the best and most perfect once in a lifetime leader, whose role is to provide decisive decision making, if the leader does not have good SMEs to inform the leader’s decisions.
Well as IT and business is an accidental career for me, I never bothered to get any certification until well into my career. By that time, I already had been PM on many 6-figure (and 7-figure) projects. No one was surprised I didn’t have the certifications, because other top resources also didn’t have certifications. Very few people asked about my educational pedigree as well, except for the very young people like barely graduated very attractive PwC junior consultant who was quite impressed I had gone to Berkeley and invited me out for drinks after work. Well, I guess I was only a few years older than her at that time. The best SMEs and PMs I ever encountered during my career didn’t even have degrees in technology and some never bothered to obtain certifications. One guy had a doctorate in dance theory… lol. Liberal Arts graduates seem to be better equipped to be PMs, Designers, and Architects, probably because they have a broader system view compared to the often narrow view of those of more technical educational backgrounds.
thanks. I had to think twice BTW when I read SMEs, of course in this context it means Subject Matter Experts, not Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises.
You have mentioned how decision-makers ignore excellent studies in the Philippines. The senyorito attitude in its bad form discourages competence by disrespecting it. BTW I found out through my Pink involvement in 2022 that Ilonggos see a senyorito as something positive and cool. Could it be that the sugar planters had to be more competent than others to succeed as that biz is somewhat complex? Is a more competent mindset behind Iloilo’s alleged successes?
Yep, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Both line managers and project managers need to know how to extract the gist of what they need to know from those who know it in detail, put together the big picture and decide on actions based on that.
This is just semantics I guess but someone who holds more power in the power dynamic and is competent probably would be a “senyor,” not a senyorito which originally meant the bumbling, vainglorious second-, third-, and so on sons of senyors who didn’t have any real responsibility and were able to apply full pursuit for personal vanity. In the old days the firstborn son usually received the majority of effort and grooming to succeed the father. I haven’t seen any major sugarcane plantations on Panay, though I know those exist, but I have been through the extensive volcanic soil-fed sugarcane plantations in Negros Occidental (majority Ilonggo there).
I would say that project success depends on successful whole-of-team effort. Executive stakeholders need to have adequate, but more importantly reasonable vision, and have an ability to accept advice from the PM. Other stakeholders need to be adequately invested, though there will always be stakeholders who don’t want to expend effort or budgets they control in their fiefdom, yet want their names included in the success if there is success. PMs need to be able to be diplomats between various stakeholders while making hard decisions on resources and how to utilize the budget efficiently in order to meet the business (or public) goal set out by the executive stakeholder. The institutional knowledge of SMEs need to be utilized effectively in order to reduce double-work and gather known best practices and risks. Team leads need to keep their project sub-teams on task, in coordination with the PM.
All that is really complicated, but doable when there is a well-crafted plan. Which is why I do not like Agile that much since Agile executes without knowing the entire picture. Agile can only exist when the budget can be topped off because there is surplus money to go around if there is some miscalculation, of which there will be many without a proper plan. I prefer older, more deliberative methods like Waterfall. In public projects there is no unlimited money and projects need to follow more conservative project planning rather than blazing ahead like Agile.
Executive decision makers may be focused on the final result, which is appropriate if in a visionary context, but I think the problem in the Philippines is everyone from PM and below have a hard time telling hard truths and difficult advices up the chain of command. That’s probably why the failures that happen in Philippines public projects are really super obvious (after the fact). In private projects, funded with private money, those projects tend to be more conservative because they don’t have the fiscal power of a whole state standing behind the project.
well, motherless tongues are often lost in translation in the Philippines. Sometimes words mean everything and nothing there.
yes, that is definitely an issue. Subordinates are often afraid to speak up – and bosses either get mad or ignore you over there. I read in a book about management cultures that Japan inspite of its hierarchies has as much bottom-up consensus as Sweden, except that in Japan feedback flows up in a very polite way.
The Philippines lacks the equivalent of “with all due respect Sir, but..” separating factual criticism which may even be helpful to the purpose of whatever group there is from an offense to the “face and power” as defined by Joe. Ages ago I told a visiting PH choir that they should improve their cassette tapes as they were a disappointment to any foreigner who bought them. In fact they sounded as if they had been recorded in our UP Diliman living room or something. The choir member just gave that laugh Filipino employees give when they don’t want to deal with something. Years later when the same choir came and I was actually part of the Filipino organization inviting them (and the choir conductor knew at least my family background so I dared speak to him) I told the choir conductor (politely) that they might want to improve their CD quality (it was CDs by then) – the glare he gave me was as if he wanted to call a mangkukulam to curse me hahaha.
The debates between Design Thinking, Systems Thinking, Lateral Thinking, and Incremental Thinking reflect deeper disagreements about how complex problems should actually be solved, and many institutional failures — especially in infrastructure, governance, and long-term planning — occur because societies rely too heavily on only one approach instead of combining them. Design thinking emphasizes human-centered solutions and collaboration but is often criticized for producing surface-level fixes that do not address structural causes; systems thinking provides holistic understanding and helps identify root problems but can become slow, abstract, and prone to analysis paralysis; lateral thinking encourages breakthrough ideas and unconventional solutions but may lack discipline and produce impractical results; while incremental thinking ensures stability, risk control, and long-term reliability yet may be too cautious to fix fundamentally broken systems. In real-world projects, especially public infrastructure, success usually requires all four working together — design thinking to ensure relevance, systems thinking to ensure coherence, lateral thinking to allow innovation when old methods fail, and incremental thinking to sustain performance over decades — because failure often begins at the planning stage, continues through weak procurement and design review, worsens through scope creep and poor stakeholder commitment, and finally becomes visible as maintenance problems even though the true causes lie in earlier lifecycle errors; thus what appears to be a preventive-maintenance crisis is often a broader failure of project lifecycle thinking, where foundations were not properly studied, long-term inspections were not planned, budgets were not secured, and institutions did not integrate creativity, analysis, discipline, and continuity into a single coherent approach, leading to infrastructure that was never truly built to last.
For decades, Filipinos have watched roads crumble, bridges fail, and public buildings deteriorate far too quickly. Every year, billions are spent, yet the pattern repeats: projects are inaugurated with fanfare, only to require expensive repairs or complete rebuilding within a few years. The usual explanations—corruption, poor materials, lack of maintenance—are real, but they only tell half the story. The deeper problem is institutional: the gap between what engineers are trained to do and what our institutions allow them to do. Engineers Know What to Do Filipino engineers graduate from top schools like UP Diliman, DLSU, and Mapúa University equipped with a rigorous understanding of the project lifecycle. They learn to: Anticipate risks before construction begins Conduct proper geotechnical and subsurface surveys Plan for long-term maintenance and lifecycle costs Balance technical, social, and environmental factors Yet when these graduates enter the workforce, their training often clashes with political timelines, bureaucratic rigidity, and institutional norms that reward speed, visibility, and low cost over durability and safety. Institutions Make the Rules, Not Engineers Several recurring institutional weaknesses drive premature project failure: Lowest-bid contracting encourages shortcuts and quality compromises. Superficial public consultations leave communities uninvolved, leading to resistance or misuse. Maintenance budgets are routinely cut after construction, treating upkeep as optional rather than mandatory. Political timelines push projects to inauguration before they are truly ready, creating long-term vulnerabilities. Even when a project manager spots risks, hierarchical culture and fear of political backlash often prevent escalation. As a result, the best-laid plans unravel under predictable pressures. Thinking Beyond the Technical Fixing infrastructure in the Philippines isn’t just about engineers or money—it’s about institutionalizing thinking at every stage of a project. This means combining: Design and systems thinking to understand community needs and interdependencies Critical and ethical thinking to enforce safety and social responsibility Reflective and participatory thinking to learn from past projects and involve stakeholders Foresight thinking to anticipate climate change, population growth, and future demands Currently, these thinking styles are present in individual professionals but rarely enforced institutionally. Without systemic incentives, projects may look complete but fail in function and durability. A Policy Choice, Not Fate Maintenance is often blamed, but it is only the tip of the iceberg. Poor early-stage decisions—compressed planning, minimal investigation, politically motivated changes—set projects on a path to failure long before the first stone is laid. Closing the gap between professional training and institutional practice is not inevitable—it’s a policy choice. Short-term reforms, like independent design reviews and ring-fenced maintenance budgets, could improve outcomes immediately. Medium- and long-term reforms, including participatory planning, lessons-learned repositories, and a culture that rewards thinking-integrated decision-making, are essential to break the cycle. The Philippines can have world-class infrastructure, but only if institutions empower professionals to apply their training fully, safely, and ethically. Otherwise, we will keep rebuilding the same roads, bridges, and public buildings—over and over again. It’s time to stop celebrating inaugurations and start celebrating durable, resilient infrastructure that serves communities for decades.
https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1053011
Design thinking par excellence