The kingdom had its own Marmath Department since 1825, as a separate agency to monitor construction of roads and palaces.

In 1949, when United State of Travancore-Cochin was formed, both the Maramath Departments were merged and renamed as Kerala PWD.

Presently P. A. Mohammed Riyas, representing Beypore Constituency is the minister for PWD.

The Minister is assisted by a senior IAS officer, Secretary for Public Works who heads the secretariat functions.

This wing is headed by a Chief Engineer and deals with matters related to the general administration and human resources management pertains to the whole department.

This wing is formed based on the Road and Bridge Maintenance Policy of the Government.

The remaining 240.8 km is currently with the National Highway Authority of India(NHAI) as part of the four/six laning programme of MoRTH.

Currently this wing is executing the World Bank aided Kerala State Transport Project (KSTP).

The organisational structure of Projects wing is as below Apart from the regular field offices like two circle and four division offices, the following additional offices also works under the Projects wing Design wing of PWD deals with the design, research, investigation and quality control aspects of various infrastructure projects and is headed by a Chief Engineer.

Apart from this there is a full-fledged investigation and quality control wing under the Design wing which is having regional I&QC laboratories at Thiruvananthapuram, Eranakulam and Kozhikode with sufficient district level quality control laboratories.

The organisational setup of the Road Maintenance wing is as shown below The Architectural wing is responsible for the preparation and finalization of all architectural designs and drawings for buildings and similar works to be executed by the Public Works Department.