Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Vikab En­gi­neer­ing Con­sul­tants Lim­it­ed Hardutt Pun­wasee has laughed off sug­ges­tions that his firm is at fault for the stalled $1.1 bil­lion Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal’s New Cen­tral Block Project.

Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Group (Caribbean) Lim­it­ed (SCG) ter­mi­nat­ed the bil­lion-dol­lar con­struc­tion con­tract stat­ing that un­rea­son­able­ness, un­fair­ness and late as­sess­ments by Vikab En­gneer­ing Con­sul­tants "is one of the ma­jor rea­sons which caused the ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion and de­lays of the project."

De­spite UDE­COTT hold­ing a press con­fer­ence to clear the air and re­leas­ing a sub­se­quent state­ment in late Jan­u­ary, ques­tions about the cir­cum­stances that led to the stalling of the hos­pi­tal’s project re­main.

In a No­vem­ber 5, 2021 ter­mi­na­tion let­ter to UDE­COTT, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Group (Caribbean) Michael Zhang blamed the FIDIC en­gi­neer for the project, Vikab En­gi­neer­ing Con­sul­tants.

Zhang in his let­ter to UDE­COTT CEO Tam­i­ca Charles-Phillips said, “Based on the ex­pe­ri­ence with the FIDIC En­gi­neer on the project in the past two years, SCG has to draw your at­ten­tion again that the FIDIC En­gi­neer’s per­for­mance with un­rea­son­able­ness, un­fair­ness and late as­sess­ments is one of the ma­jor rea­sons which caused the ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion and de­lays of the project.”

How­ev­er, when asked by the Sun­day Guardian if he has any­thing to say to de­fend his com­pa­ny’s rep­u­ta­tion, Pun­wasee said, “I don’t have to de­fend my rep­u­ta­tion. My rep­u­ta­tion speaks for it­self. It’s pro­pa­gan­da that will not stand up to scruti­ny.

“Men try­ing to sell their soul and play games. I don’t play games. I am a straight shoot­er. I am a pro­fes­sion­al. This is why we have sur­vived for so long.”

Sun­day Guardian asked UDE­COTT Chair­man Noel Gar­cia about claims by SCG that Vikab En­gi­neer­ing was at fault in the stalling of the hos­pi­tal Cen­tral Block project, and if any le­gal or com­pen­sato­ry ac­tion would be con­sid­ered against Vikab if that claim turns out to be true.

Gar­cia said, “Your ques­tions are based on a false premise. UDE­COTT has no is­sue with the FIDIC en­gi­neer and the ques­tion of loss­es does not arise.”

Tak­ing a clos­er look at Shang­hai Con­struc­tion (Caribbean) Group’s No­vem­ber, 2021 let­ter to UDE­COTT, ten spe­cif­ic points of con­tention with Vikab En­gi­neer­ing were list­ed.

Among its con­tentions, SCG Caribbean claimed that af­ter late ac­cess to the site, the FIDIC en­gi­neer failed to treat fair­ly with the group’s com­pen­sa­tion for its per­son­nel.

He claimed, as a re­sult, SCG Caribbean was re­spon­si­ble for salaries, visas, trav­el, lodg­ing and board­ing for sev­en months un­til the project be­gan.

“Up to date, 21 months has gone, we have still not re­ceived the fi­nal as­sess­ment yet. This un­ac­cept­able de­lay made us wor­ry about the process of Project Man­age­ment,” the let­ter read.

Zhang al­so al­leged that a five per cent change was re­quired for the de­vel­op­ment de­sign and the FIDIC en­gi­neer had a 21-day oblig­a­tion to ad­vise on the change, but in­stead, the stage took 165 days.

“The FIDIC En­gi­neer had not prop­er­ly co­or­di­nat­ed the re­quire­ments with the End User on time. This ad­di­tion­al 144 days ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed the progress of the oth­er de­sign work of the Project,” Zhang said.

In its oth­er points, SCG Caribbean al­leged that the ac­tions of Vikab En­gi­neer­ing caused a de­lay of 119 days–well be­yond a con­trac­tu­al pe­ri­od of 21 days–in the con­struc­tion de­sign stage; that Vikab En­gi­neer­ing’s mis­un­der­stand­ing of con­tract doc­u­ments by the FIDIC en­gi­neer caused pay­ment de­lays; that Vikab En­gi­neer­ing added to the cre­ation of dis­putes be­tween SCG Caribbean and UDE­COTT; that the FIDIC en­gi­neer had an un­ac­cept­able po­si­tion con­cern­ing the re­quest for pro­pos­als for the de­sign and build of a new doc­tor’s lounge/walk­way/se­cu­ri­ty booth and the sub­se­quent award to an­oth­er con­trac­tor.

Zhang al­so al­leged that the FIDIC en­gi­neer re­fused to ac­cept the let­ter of the em­ploy­er’s then act­ing CEO, which would have giv­en the au­thor­i­ty to vary the list of the items on which fluc­tu­a­tions could be re­cov­ered.

“There is the ques­tion of the test­ing of the steel struc­ture…De­spite this, the en­gi­neer has pressed his de­sire to utilise a more dan­ger­ous, and in the view of our ex­perts, a to­tal­ly in­ap­pro­pri­ate use of ra­di­ograph­ic test­ing on the build­ing steel struc­ture works,” point eight of the let­ter stat­ed.

“The FIDIC en­gi­neer is re­quired to cer­ti­fy all undis­put­ed amounts of these 19 claims pre­sent­ed, which he has failed to do, dat­ing back to Jan­u­ary 6th 2020, which re­mains un­cer­ti­fied some 22 months lat­er,” said the last point.

In 2019, Shang­hai Con­struc­tion was award­ed the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal’s new cen­tral block con­tract.

Its bid was $1bil­lion, $600 mil­lion less than the bid by French com­pa­ny Bouygues Ba­ti­ment.

The new block is meant to house 540 beds on 13 floors.

The head of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil Fazir Khan said that he sent a re­quest for more in­for­ma­tion through the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act on how the project and con­tract fell apart.

BOX

About Vikab En­gi­neer­ing

In­cor­po­rat­ed in 1985, Vikab En­gi­neer­ing Lim­it­ed has es­tab­lished it­self as one of the lead­ing en­gi­neer­ing con­sult­ing firms in the Caribbean.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion com­pris­es two en­ti­ties.

The Trinida­di­an arm is based at St Au­gus­tine, while there its sis­ter com­pa­ny Vikab (Guyana) Lim­it­ed is based in George­town, Guyana.

Vikab has over­seen ma­jor projects in Trinidad, Guyana, Suri­name, Grena­da and Saint Lu­cia.

Among its most well-known projects in Trinidad is the Cou­va Chil­dren Hos­pi­tal, in which Vikab act­ed as the FIDIC en­gi­neer, over­see­ing de­sign re­view and con­struc­tion, as well as su­per­vi­sion ser­vices for the de­sign-build con­tract.

The con­tro­ver­sial project was even­tu­al­ly com­plet­ed at a cost of $1.6 bil­lion and is be­ing used in the par­al­lel health care sys­tem to­day to treat COVID-19 pa­tients.

The project’s part­ners were UDE­COTT and Shang­hai In­ter­na­tion­al (Caribbean) Lim­it­ed.

Vikab al­so over­saw civ­il/struc­tur­al en­gi­neer­ing de­sign ser­vices for the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo, the Ma­hat­ma Ghan­di In­sti­tute, the Ma­yaro Fire Sta­tion and the Na­tion­al Train­ing Cen­tre.

BOX in fine print

What Gar­cia, PM Row­ley said:

At a press con­fer­ence on Jan­u­ary 25, UDE­COTT Chair­man Noel Gar­cia con­firmed dis­crep­an­cies with Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny but in­sist­ed the project had not col­lapsed.

He claimed there was “mis­chief” be­ing placed in the pub­lic do­main.

Gar­cia added that there was no firm de­ci­sion yet on whether the project would go back out to ten­der.

A day lat­er, UDE­COTT is­sued a state­ment con­firm­ing that SCG ter­mi­nat­ed the con­tract with UDE­COTT via a No­vem­ber 5, 2021 let­ter.

It said the or­gan­i­sa­tion con­tin­ues to hold dis­cus­sions with SCG to re­solve some of the is­sues.

On Jan­u­ary 19, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, the line min­is­ter for UDE­COTT, in re­spond­ing to ques­tions by op­po­si­tion MP Roodal Mooni­lal in Par­lia­ment, ad­mit­ted there were is­sues with SCG over the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal project.

He claimed the is­sues were main­ly a re­sult of the im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“I am aware that some threats were laid but I’m not sure whether, in fact, the threats were car­ried out. The con­trac­tor was threat­en­ing to ter­mi­nate and UDE­COTT had no dif­fi­cul­ty with that be­cause UDE­COTT is pro­tect­ed by con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments. How­ev­er, I do know that there are on­go­ing dis­cus­sions be­tween UDE­COTT and the con­trac­tor, and I am not sure whether the threat or the is­suance of a let­ter of ter­mi­na­tion is closed in those dis­cus­sions,” the PM added.