President Rodrigo Duterte’s marching orders to his “Build, Build, Build” team was clear from the onset: Finish as many projects as possible at the soonest possible time. Whoever gets the credit is none of our business.

I recall when senatorial aspirant and former Secretary Mark Villar was appointed to lead the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), he took the responsibility with a firm resolve. I remember him saying that he wants to end his stint as czar of “Build, Build, Build” knowing that he gave it everything he got.

When he started institutionalizing reforms in DPWH, there were many challenges — from ghost projects, delays, right-of-way issues and death threats. But we knew that if we are to make genuine change in the way government infrastructure is built, then reforms are a prerequisite.

On the first six months of his stint, Secretary Mark adopted drone and satellite technology for monitoring of DPWH projects and eliminated ghost projects via a geotagging system.

The DPWH used a technology called the Infra-Track App, which has a built-in geotagging feature that plots photos inputted in the system for monitoring in the exact geographic coordinates where they were taken. The system automatically alerts key officials of DPWH when a project is misreported from a different location. This way, Secretary Mark ensured that there were no ghost projects in the DPWH.