Shal­iza Has­sanali

For­mer pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) Win­ston Ri­ley is keep­ing "all op­tions open" with re­gards to the ap­proval of a $500 mil­lion con­tract to Chi­na Jiang­su In­ter­na­tion­al to build the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), Pe­nal/Debe cam­pus. A source in the con­struc­tion sec­tor said one of the op­tions was to seek le­gal ad­vice.

"In the mean­time, we have some con­cerns about the process in it­self and how it was award­ed...and we will be seek­ing le­gal ad­vice. De­pend­ing on the le­gal ad­vice if we have a case it will go for­ward for the in­ter­est of our mem­bers and the pub­lic," the source said. Ri­ley said the JCC's po­si­tion was that the project should have been re­tendered.

"We nev­er ex­pect­ed Chi­na Jiang­su to win any­thing. We are shocked that they are giv­en a job of that na­ture when the con­sul­tants know their track record very well," he said. Fol­low­ing an an­nounce­ment by UWI Fri­day that Chi­na Jiang­su won the bid for the de­sign/build of the cam­pus, the JCC, head­ed by Afra Ray­mond, held a marathon meet­ing to dis­cuss the mat­ter.

The JCC com­pris­es the As­so­ci­a­tion of Pro­fes­sion­al En­gi­neers of T&T, T&T In­sti­tute of Ar­chi­tects, Board of Ar­chi­tec­ture of T&T, T&T So­ci­ety of Plan­ners, T&T Con­trac­tors' As­so­ci­a­tion and the In­sti­tute of Sur­vey­ors of T&T. Chi­na Jiang­su was one of sev­en pre-qual­i­fied ap­pli­cants and one of four which sub­mit­ted ten­ders.

UWI not­ed that Chi­na Jiang­su's suc­cess­ful ten­der was worth $499,513,631.81 com­pared to the three near­est bids $769,934,445.50, $770,585,965.60 and $1,006,795,567.86. The in­vi­ta­tion for ten­der was is­sued on De­cem­ber 8, 2011. Ri­ley said based on Chi­na Jiang­su's track record "this is an ex­cep­tion­al award."

Ri­ley said he ex­pects the project to fail. "I am per­son­al­ly hap­py that it hap­pened. It will bring every­thing to light...the is­sue of pro­cure­ment, lo­cal con­tent, the de­sign build." Ri­ley said Chi­na Jiang­su's writ­ten per­for­mance on the de­vel­op­ment of eTecK and UTT cam­pus in Tamana was shock­ing. ETecK ter­mi­nat­ed its con­tract, while UTT is still in­com­plete.

Hav­ing been award­ed sev­er­al small pri­ma­ry school con­tracts, Ri­ley said, Chi­na Jiang­su did rea­son­ably well. "But once they hit the big­ger con­tracts that is where they start to fal­ter." Asked what was the JCC's next step, Ri­ley said, "the is­sue with the next step is al­ways a con­tentious is­sue with the JCC. We are look­ing at all our op­tions."

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Fazal Karim said he has al­ways main­tained that pro­cure­ment of goods and ser­vices in the award of the con­tract by UWI was pur­sued in ac­cor­dance with its in­de­pen­dent pro­cure­ment poli­cies and terms and con­di­tions of en­gage­ment.