GMA Network.com, 20 December 2012
By Siegfrid O. Alegado

The Education Department on Thursday asked companies to bid for the multibillion-peso construction of over 10,000 classrooms nationwide under the Aquino administration’s public-private partnership (PPP) program, a move seen to lessen classroom shortage.
“The Department of Education (DepEd) invites interested parties to apply to pre-qualify to bid for the design, financing, construction and maintenance of one-story, two-story, three-story and four-story school buildings,” Education Undersecretary Francisco Varela said in an invitation to bid published in broadsheet Philippine Daily Inquirer.
Prospective bidders may get the invitation documents on January 10, 2012. They have until February 12, 2013 to submit applications for pre-qualification.
Varela said the bidding process will follow a two-stage system, where prospective bidders must first pre-qualify based on legal, technical  and financial capability before they can submit their respective bids.
DepEd director for communications Anna Cristina Ganzon said the second phase of the PPP for School Infrastructure Project (PSIP) will help government cover the lack of classrooms nationwide.
“We are confident that with phase 2 of the PPP for school infrastructure, we are all well on our way to achieving zero backlog in classrooms by 2013,” Ganzon said in mobile phone text message.
According to a brief on the PPP Center website, PSIP Phase 2 is worth P13.14 billion and is a under build-operate-transfer scheme.
The school infrastructure project involves the design and construction of 10,679 classrooms in over 5,000 state-run schools nationwide. It is eyed for implementation in 2013 to 2014.
Specifically, the number of classrooms are broken down to: Region I (241), Region II (547), Region III (1,017), Region IV-B (1,108), Region V (1,061), Region VI (732), Region VII (1,037), Region VIII (903), Region IX (476), Region X (1,222), Region XI (355), Region XII (637), CARAGA (708), and CAR (635).
DepEd, however, said “the number of school sites, school buildings, and classrooms is still subject to change.”
The first phase of the project or the PSIP Phase 1 – which involves the design, finance and construction of about 9,300 classrooms in four regions in Luzon – is the second PPP project to be awarded by the Aquino administration.
The P16.5-billion project was won by the combined groups of BF Corp.- Riverbanks Development Corp. and Citicore Investments Holdings Inc.- Megawide Construction Corp. last September. — VS, GMA News