Renu­ka Singh

The $400 mil­lion Curepe In­ter­change project is ex­pect­ed to start with­in the next 30 days, with Nid­co choos­ing to joint­ly award the con­tract for the project to the two top bid­ders fol­low­ing a pub­lic falling out over the ten­der­ing process late last year.

For­mer ju­nior min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Sta­cy Roop­nar­ine had fall­en out with her boss Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan, af­ter it was re­vealed then that lo­cal con­trac­tor, Lutch­meesingh Trans­port Com­pa­ny had been se­lect­ed for the job though it ranked sec­ond in the ten­der screen­ing process. It was re­vealed that first-ranked bid­der Vin­ci Con­struc­tion lost out be­cause of its high cost­ing for the mega-job.

The Sun­day Guardian has since learned that though Lutch­meesingh was se­lect­ed, Nid­co-based en­gi­neers ob­ject­ed on the ba­sis that the com­pa­ny's ten­der con­tained sev­er­al short­com­ings.

How­ev­er, in fresh de­vel­op­ments, Nid­co has de­cid­ed to award the project joint­ly to the two top bid­ders. "We are cur­rent­ly in ne­go­ti­a­tions with the first and sec­ond bid­der," Nid­co chair­man Dr Car­son Charles con­firmed.

There is no word as to what prompt­ed these fresh ne­go­ti­a­tions or who made the call to have the job shared be­tween the two top-ranked bid­ders, but Charles con­firmed that the project would be of­fered to both con­trac­tors, af­ter months of the project be­ing on hold and talks of quash­ing the bid and restart­ing the ten­der process.

Back in No­vem­ber, it was re­port­ed that the two top bid­ders had been re­ject­ed on the ba­sis of price and ex­per­tise, re­spec­tive­ly. Charles con­firmed to the Sun­day Guardian that Nid­co's en­gi­neer­ing team had found that sev­er­al ma­jor items were not catered for in the ten­der sub­mit­ted by Lutch­meesingh, lead­ing to Nid­co over­turn­ing that com­pa­ny's se­lec­tion for the project pre­vi­ous­ly.

Nid­co had been re­port­ed then as weigh­ing ad­di­tion­al op­tions to get the job done.

The tenure of Nid­co's board end­ed in De­cem­ber 2014 and left the fu­ture of the Curepe In­ter­change in lim­bo. Charles had said then that he ex­pect­ed the project to be fi­nalised and award­ed by Jan­u­ary 2015 but, al­most six months lat­er, the project re­mained stalled.

"We could not come to an agree­ment with Vin­ci Con­struc­tion based on the cost of its ten­der and with Lutch­meesingh, the ne­go­ti­a­tion com­mit­tee was not con­vinced that they had the abil­i­ty to com­plete the job," Charles said.

"Quite frankly, there were three con­trac­tors se­lect­ed and we were not sat­is­fied with any."

De­spite Charles' mis­giv­ings, the project is ex­pect­ed to come be­fore the Nid­co ex­ec­u­tive with­in the next month and award­ed soon af­ter.

"We are seek­ing to work out a so­lu­tion so that we can use the spe­cif­ic ex­per­tise from both com­pa­nies," Charles said.

The project is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed 18 months af­ter it be­gins.

Oth­er projects

Key among the projects to be com­plet­ed at a rapid rate is the now 50 per cent com­plet­ed bil­lion-dol­lar high­way to Point Fortin. The Sun­day Guardian has learned that Nid­co is now in talks with all ma­jor road con­trac­tors, in­clud­ing Ju­nior Sam­my, Seer­eram Broth­ers and Lutch­meesingh, for them to work as a unit to com­plete the road works in con­junc­tion with Brazil-based OAS Con­struc­tion, which con­trols the project.

"So much is go­ing on at Nid­co," Charles said.

"We are cur­rent­ly in talks with the ma­jor con­trac­tors in the coun­try to sub-con­tract the work on the Point Fortin high­way and com­plete that project by next year," he said.

He said that Ram­bachan was ex­pect­ed to open a bridge in Clax­ton Bay to­day and has plans for an­oth­er 20 bridges with­in the next few months.

Nid­co has al­so start­ed work on land­slips around the coun­try and has been giv­en a five-year man­date to work on some 600 land­slips, as well as sev­er­al drainage projects un­der the Min­istry of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources.

Charles said an­oth­er big project–the Diego Mar­tin In­ter­change–was ex­pect­ed to be tabled soon.

"That project is cur­rent­ly at the de­sign stage and is with the con­sul­tant," Charles said.

Charles said Nid­co was al­so at the ex­e­cu­tion stage of the Port-of-Spain flood al­le­vi­a­tion project which has been fund­ed by the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank for well over half-a-bil­lion dol­lars.