Two years af­ter it was closed due to struc­tur­al flaws, the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts (Na­pa) re­mains closed and is not like­ly to re­open any­time soon.

GML En­ter­prise Desk ob­tained an in­spec­tion re­port on the fa­cil­i­ty com­mis­sioned by the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism which re­veals sev­er­al struc­tur­al flaws that could present pub­lic dan­ger and which must be cor­rect­ed ur­gent­ly be­fore the fa­cil­i­ty is re­opened.

The fa­cil­i­ty cost tax­pay­ers half a bil­lion dol­lars and re­me­di­al work will cost tax­pay­ers mil­lions more.

The re­port iden­ti­fied struc­tur­al de­fi­cien­cies in al­most the en­tire build­ing, in­clud­ing the UTT fa­cil­i­ty, cat­walk, stage area, roof and ceil­ing.

They in­clude in­com­plete weld­ing, braces for key beams are on­ly tack weld­ed, some beams are weld­ed on one side on­ly, screws and bolts em­bed­ded in some welds, fab­ri­ca­tion cuts on the webs of beams, main beams joined us­ing re­in­forc­ing plates and were not butt weld­ed, and plates were used to fill spaces be­tween some beams.

In De­cem­ber 2014, BBFL Caribbean Lim­it­ed was con­tract­ed by the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti Cul­tur­al­ism in De­cem­ber to con­duct a con­di­tion sur­vey on the build­ing and found "sev­er­al de­fects" which re­quired fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion by a cer­ti­fied weld­ing in­spec­tor.

The com­pa­ny re­tained the ser­vices of Cer­ti­fied Weld­ing In­spec­tor-Non De­struc­tive Testers Lim­it­ed (NDT) to so the nec­es­sary tests.

NDT con­clud­ed that none of the welds in­spect­ed were ac­cept­able to code due to weld pro­files, un­der­cut and the poros­i­ty be­yond al­low­able lim­its.

With spe­cif­ic ref­er­ence to the UTT at­tic, it was found that bolt­ed con­nec­tions be­tween pri­ma­ry mem­bers were con­nect­ed by sin­gle bolts per joint and the bolts were not tight­ened.

In the cat­walk area, the ceil­ing above the au­di­ence area was said to be sus­pend­ed from the struc­ture by quar­ter-inch thread­ed di­am­e­ter steel bars. The steel bars, ac­cord­ing to the re­port, were con­nect­ed to the struc­ture by tack welds.

The struc­ture at the prosce­ni­um–the arch from which the stage cur­tain comes down–con­sists of beams, pipe braces, which are con­nect­ed by weld­ing but "none were ac­cept­able to AWS D1-1 vi­su­al in­spec­tion cri­te­ria due to un­ac­cept­able weld pro­file, poros­i­ty and un­der­cut."

In the cat­walk stage area the fire cur­tain is tack weld­ed in po­si­tion.

No weld­ing bolts were ob­served at con­nec­tion points of the four-inch di­am­e­ter beam to sup­port the brace.

The re­port al­so point­ed to "in­com­plete welds on var­i­ous com­po­nents" and stat­ed that "of all welds in­spect­ed, all are un­ac­cept­able" in keep­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­cept­ed cri­te­ria.

Sources said joints were not prop­er­ly weld­ed and over a pe­ri­od of time this could present a dan­ger to the pub­lic, as there could be a par­tial col­lapse of the struc­ture in the event of a strong earth­quake.

Full joint pen­e­tra­tion welds should have been used to en­sure the safe­ty of the struc­ture, but in­stead fil­let welds were used which is in­ad­e­quate in a struc­ture of that size.

$10 mil­lion re­pair bill

Well-placed sources told the GML En­ter­prise Desk that the in­spec­tor rec­om­mend­ed that all the welds be re­placed, but the con­trac­tor, Shang­hai Con­struc­tion, was seek­ing to re­duce the scope of re­me­di­al work be­cause of the cost.

The GML En­ter­prise Desk was told by a well-placed source that on­ly 20 per cent of the rec­om­mend­ed re­me­di­al work has been done and that has al­ready cost close to $10 mil­lion.

How­ev­er, there is still a sig­nif­i­cant amount of work to be done to cor­rect the struc­tur­al de­fi­cien­cies iden­ti­fied in the re­port.

Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly ad­mit­ted that the cor­rec­tive work "will cost mil­lions of­dol­lars," but she could not give an ex­act fig­ure.

"The fi­nal cost has not yet been tab­u­lat­ed," she said.

The min­is­ter said tax­pay­ers will not have to foot the en­tire re­pair bill since "some of the cost is be­ing borne by Shang­hai Con­struc­tion, who is cor­rect­ing the de­fects which was as a re­sult of their work."

Shang­hai would not bear all the costs be­cause there were two is­sues, she said, in­clud­ing "struc­tur­al de­fi­cien­cies where some of the welds did not stand up to in­spec­tion and lack of main­te­nance."

"In or­der to en­sure the safe­ty of every­one" it was agreed "that the welds be re­done." The min­is­ter said sub­stan­tial work has al­ready been done on de­fects iden­ti­fied on the roof.

She said cor­rec­tive work start­ed late last year in­volv­ing both Shang­hai and some lo­cal con­trac­tors.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said while she had been as­sured that the work will be com­plet­ed this year, she could not give a time frame for com­ple­tion.

JCC: It's a shame

Pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil James Arm­strong said: "Na­pa is a rel­a­tive­ly new build­ing and should not have had so many de­fi­cien­cies. It is clear that some­thing went wrong some­where."

He said that the sit­u­a­tion with the struc­ture "is a con­cern that we have raised in the past, which is why we are stress­ing that the State should not by­pass the ex­pe­ri­ence which we have and en­ter in­to gov­ern­ment to gov­ern­ment arrange­ments."

Arm­strong said he was not aware that "any lo­cal con­trac­tor had been ap­proached to rec­ti­fy the prob­lem, since no mem­ber had in­di­cat­ed that were had been ap­proached."

Shang­hai Con­struc­tion was giv­en the con­tract to build Na­pa by Ude­cott. There was no ten­der for the project. Arm­strong said projects of that mag­ni­tude "should be out for ten­der and al­low lo­cal con­trac­tors to sub­mit bids."

He said in­dus­try stake­hold­ers have the ex­per­tise and where­with­al and "we are aware of what ca­pac­i­ty we have, so if it is be­yond our ca­pac­i­ty then we can say let's find a joint ven­ture part­ner who we can en­gage. But what is hap­pen­ing is that the way these re­quest for pro­pos­als are is­sued, they lock out lo­cal con­trac­tors on tech­ni­cal is­sues."

Arm­strong said it is not the in­ten­tion to "lock out any­one" but they be­lieve "the lo­cal in­dus­try can per­form and make con­tri­bu­tions to these mega-projects."

He added that there needs to be a "con­scious pol­i­cy of the Gov­ern­ment to en­gage lo­cal com­pa­nies and give them the op­por­tu­ni­ty, so they can gen­er­ate em­ploy­ment."

Ef­forts to con­tact Michael Zhang of Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Lim­it­ed for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.

ABOUT NA­PA

?Na­pa was built un­der an undis­closed gov­ern­ment to gov­ern­ment arrange­ment with Chi­na. There was no com­pet­i­tive ten­der for the project and the con­tract was giv­en to the Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Group by Ude­cott.

The fa­cil­i­ty was opened with much fan­fare in 2009 and was ex­pect­ed to play a sig­nif­i­cant role in the de­vel­op­ment of arts and cul­ture. Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning had praised the fa­cil­i­ty as be­ing "world class."

How­ev­er, The Artists Coali­tion of T&T (ACTT) was not im­pressed. Pres­i­dent Rubadiri Vic­tor said the fa­cil­i­ty was woe­ful­ly in­ad­e­quate. Among the short com­ings he iden­ti­fied were no load­ing area for the main stage, poor con­struct of the stage floor, flawed dance stu­dios, no cos­tume rooms, a de­fec­tive or­ches­tra pit and hun­dreds of prob­lems with light­ing and sound fix­tures and equip­ment, no show­ers, no dress­ing rooms, and two rooms which were said to be small­er the­atres had no seats.

Vic­tor es­ti­mat­ed it would cost $80 mil­lion to fix the prob­lems.

By 2014 the build­ing's flaws were com­ing to the sur­face and the fa­cil­i­ty was closed af­ter sev­er­al prob­lems with air qual­i­ty and struc­tur­al is­sues were un­cov­ered. It was sub­se­quent­ly closed for non-com­pli­ance with OS­HA Reg­u­la­tions.

Then Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Lin­coln Dou­glas said it would have cost an ad­di­tion­al $100 mil­lion to fix the build­ing. Among oth­er things, he said screws and bolts used on the fa­cil­i­ty were unique to Chi­na and had to be im­port­ed, in ad­di­tion he said tiles were falling off the build­ing, there were plumb­ing fail­ures and the foun­da­tion be­gan fail­ing, in terms of its de­sign and fil­tra­tion sys­tem, the mov­ing stage showed ma­jor de­fects and the sup­port stands for the stage were crum­bling.

The fa­cil­i­ty was closed and the UTT class­es were re­lo­cat­ed. Cau­tion tape was placed across the build­ing. How­ev­er part of the fa­cil­i­ty was used as re­cent as Ju­ly 8 for the pub­lic view­ing of the body of for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning.