Raphael John-Lall

Nicholas Mout­tet, the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Abel Build­ing So­lu­tion (ABS) is hop­ing that the Caribbean Con­struc­tion Awards (CCA) will raise the pro­file of the con­struc­tion in­dus­try. He said peo­ple have de­vel­oped a neg­a­tive view of the con­struc­tion in­dus­try in re­cent times and this award cer­e­mo­ny is meant to show the pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ments in the sec­tor in T&T and the rest of the Caribbean. "We saw is­sues with the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) and al­le­ga­tions of build­ings that are be­ing built that are not up to prop­er stan­dards. We want peo­ple to see the pos­i­tive things that are hap­pen­ing in the sec­tor," he said.

He said there has been good work in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try here in T&T and through­out the Caribbean and this must be recog­nised. "We see how the sky­line of Port-of-Spain has changed. We want to recog­nise the im­por­tance of the work of pro­fes­sion­als in this in­dus­try. When you look at places like Haiti and Grena­da you see what hap­pened af­ter nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and this rais­es the im­por­tance of stan­dards in the in­dus­try. These awards show the qual­i­ty of work done and how they should be done," he said.

He told the Guardian this in a phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day. The Caribbean Con­struc­tion Awards (CCA) will be held on March 21 at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.

The awards cer­e­mo­ny would recog­nise re­gion­al ex­cel­lence in the in­dus­tries of ar­chi­tec­ture, en­gi­neer­ing and con­struc­tion. The CCA will look at con­struc­tion projects from through­out the re­gion, judg­ing them on in­no­va­tion, beau­ty and func­tion­al­i­ty of the de­sign as well as the qual­i­ty of con­struc­tion. The pur­pose is to both recog­nise the mer­it of the re­gion­al in­dus­try and to en­cour­age the pur­suit of ex­cel­lence. The CCA award is an ini­tial con­struc­tion awards cer­e­mo­ny cre­at­ed and host­ed by ABEL/Best­crete/Pen­ta un­der the aus­pices of their par­ent com­pa­ny ANSA McAl Lim­it­ed to recog­nise ex­cel­lence in ar­chi­tec­ture and con­struc­tion.

Projects will be judged based on the ar­chi­tec­ture, en­gi­neer­ing and con­struc­tion in large build­ing and in­no­va­tion cat­e­gories. Par­tic­i­pants will have pho­to­graph­ic dis­plays of their work ex­hib­it­ed at the CA­IC/Cari­com Caribbean Con­struc­tion Fo­rum on March 21 and 22. Mout­tet said there had been many calls con­cern­ing en­tries for the awards. En­tries should be sub­mit­ted through the CCA Web site at www.caribbean­con­struc­tion­awards.com and the dead­line for en­tries will be March 4.