Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Ques­tions are be­ing asked about how two con­trac­tors rec­om­mend­ed by the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Ltd's (EF­CL) eval­u­a­tion team end­ed up be­ing side­lined for re­fur­bish­ment works at two sec­ondary schools. Even more puz­zling is the fact that the ten­der eval­u­a­tion re­port on the award of the mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar con­tracts in­di­cates oth­er­wise.

Diego Mar­tin North/ East MP Colm Im­bert first raised the is­sue in Par­lia­ment dur­ing the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion de­bate. The con­tracts were for an elec­tri­cal up­grade at Tran­quil­li­ty Sec­ondary School and con­struc­tion of a mul­ti-pur­pose hall at Lak­sh­mi Girls Hin­du Col­lege. Copies of the ten­der eval­u­a­tion re­port ob­tained by the T&T Guardian showed that in both in­stances the eval­u­a­tion team's rec­om­men­da­tions were not ad­hered to.

In the con­tract for the elec­tri­cal up­grade, the fol­low­ing pro­pos­als were sub­mit­ted, ac­cord­ing to the re­port:

• Kislee Com­pa­ny Ltd - $1,901,875;

• John Jef­frey - $1,813,775;

• Je­re­my Bap­tiste De­sign and Build Ltd - $1,471,411.72;

• Cla­mens Mar­ket­ing &Tech­ni­cal Ser­vices Ltd - $1,207,900.20;

• Cell Plus Ltd - $1,183,666.25;

• Leef Com­pa­ny Ltd - $895,775;

• Gob­in's Elec­tri­cal Con­trac­tors - $877,000;

• Cutech Ser­vices Ltd - $714,375; and

• La House Es­ti­mate - $1,934,731.29

Based on the pro­pos­als and ob­ser­va­tions, the eval­u­a­tion team rec­om­mend­ed that the con­tract be award­ed to John Jef­frey. Its re­port states: "The ten­dered price of John Jef­frey would best serve our in­ter­ests of ef­fi­cien­cy, abil­i­ty to suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete the job with­in the spec­i­fied time and cost op­ti­mi­sa­tion.

"The eval­u­a­tion team there­fore rec­om­mends John Jef­frey be award­ed the con­tract, as iden­ti­fied, for the Tran­quil­li­ty Sec­ondary School for the ten­dered sum of $1,813,775, VAT ex­clu­sive, for a du­ra­tion of 20 cal­en­dar days." The eval­u­a­tion re­port was signed by pro­cure­ment of­fi­cer Mechyle O'Brien, quan­ti­ty sur­vey­or Aldric Sinaswee and pro­cure­ment man­ag­er Heather Joseph.

How­ev­er, on Jan­u­ary 19 a let­ter of award was not sent to John Jef­frey but to Kislee Com­pa­ny Ltd. The let­ter stat­ed: "The EF­CL is pleased to in­form you of our ac­cep­tance of your ten­der to un­der­take elec­tri­cal up­grades at Tran­quil­li­ty Sec­ondary, in ac­cor­dance with the con­di­tions of con­tract stat­ed in the ten­der doc­u­ment at a sum of $1,901,875, ex­clu­sive of VAT."

The let­ter fur­ther stat­ed that the du­ra­tion of the 24-hour work sched­ule was for 14 con­sec­u­tive days, com­menc­ing Jan­u­ary 21. In re­la­tion to con­struc­tion of the mul­ti-pur­pose hall at Lak­sh­mi Girls' Hin­du Col­lege, the se­lect­ed con­trac­tor was al­so not giv­en the job.

Four com­pa­nies sub­mit­ted bids:

• Ther­mal Im­pact Af­ford­able Homes Com­pa­ny Ltd;

• Moo­sai De­vel­op­ment Con­struc­tion (Caribbean) Ltd;

• En­vi­rotec Ltd; and

• Civstruct As­so­ciates.

The eval­u­a­tion team, com­pris­ing Joseph, Sinaswee, se­nior project man­ag­er (sec­ondary schools di­vi­sion) Lisa Bridglal, project man­ag­er Carvi­ta Singh and di­vi­sion­al man­ag­er Ju­lia Warn­er Eti­enne, rec­om­mend­ed Civstruct As­so­ciates for the works. The con­tract was val­ued at $13,432,000, VAT in­clu­sive.

On the ba­sis of the pro­pos­als, Ther­mal Im­pact Af­ford­able Homes Com­pa­ny Ltd re­ceived the low­est score of 38.5 points. The re­port stat­ed that the com­pa­ny's fail­ure to sub­mit a sched­ule, method­ol­o­gy and de­tailed cash flow re­sult­ed in the con­trac­tor's sub­mis­sion be­ing deemed sub­stan­tial­ly un­re­spon­sive.

Moo­sai De­vel­op­ment Con­struc­tion (Caribbean) Ltd topped the eval­u­a­tion with a score of 89.5 points. That com­pa­ny's pro­pos­al was deemed "ful­ly re­spon­sive." Trail­ing be­hind was Civstruct As­so­ciates, with 71.5 points. The eval­u­a­tion team con­sid­ered the pro­pos­al to be "sub­stan­tial­ly re­spon­sive."

On the pro­pos­al sub­mit­ted by En­vi­rotec Ltd, the re­port said the com­pa­ny did not meet the fol­low­ing cri­te­ria:

• The sched­ule was very ba­sic, lacked in­for­ma­tion; and

• no de­tailed source of ma­te­r­i­al was sub­mit­ted.

"As out­lined above, this con­trac­tor sub­mit­ted a very pre­lim­i­nary sched­ule which did not demon­strate an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the lag and lead re­quire­ments for the ac­tiv­i­ties and did not in­spire con­fi­dence that the project would be com­plet­ed with­in the 244 days spec­i­fied. "As a con­se­quence, this sub­mis­sion was still deemed sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly re­spon­sive," the re­port stat­ed.

The com­pa­ny was award­ed 65 points. The eval­u­a­tion team rec­om­mend­ed the con­tract be award­ed to Civstruct As­so­ciates at a val­ue of $13,432,000. "Based on the fore­go­ing and con­sid­er­a­tion of price but more so demon­strat­ed ca­pa­bil­i­ty, the eval­u­a­tion team rec­om­mends that the con­tract for the con­struc­tion of the mul­ti-pur­pose hall for the Lak­sh­mi Girls' Hin­du School be award­ed to Civstruct As­so­ciates," the re­port, dat­ed De­cem­ber 15, 2011, stat­ed.

One day lat­er, on De­cem­ber 16, the award let­ter was sent to En­vi­rotec Ltd. The award let­ter, which stat­ed the com­pa­ny was ob­lig­at­ed to en­ter in­to a for­mal writ­ten agree­ment with EF­CL, read: "The EF­CL is pleased to in­form you of our ac­cep­tance of your ten­der of Sep­tem­ber 9 for the con­struc­tion of the mul­ti-pur­pose hall at Lak­sh­mi Girls' Hin­du Col­lege with­in the stat­ed pe­ri­od, in ac­cor­dance with the con­di­tions of a for­mal agree­ment at a to­tal sum of $14,407,592.08, VAT in­clu­sive.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh re­ferred all ques­tions to the Min­istry's com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment. How­ev­er, up to press time yes­ter­day, an e-mail sent on Mon­day to the min­istry's com­mu­ni­ca­tion spe­cial­ist Yolan­da Morales-Car­val­ho re­mained unan­swered.