An­na-Lisa Paul

Al­though he at­tempt­ed to evade di­rect­ly an­swer­ing ques­tions posed to him by lead at­tor­ney for the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the Las Al­turas hous­ing de­vel­op­ment, ge­ot­ech­ni­cal en­gi­neer Mar­tin An­drews yes­ter­day ad­mit­ted that he failed to per­form cer­tain func­tions re­lat­ing to his port­fo­lio which were nec­es­sary to de­ter­mine the site suit­abil­i­ty.

Grilled by Se­nior Coun­sel Pamela El­der for just over two hours at the con­clu­sion of the fifth ev­i­den­tiary hear­ing at the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain, An­drews con­firmed that at a site vis­it on March 2, 2006, he was shown the large cracks which had oc­curred as well as the set­tle­ment of the land near the site of­fice.

This ad­mis­sion came one day af­ter he tes­ti­fied that he had on­ly been shown the ex­ca­vat­ed area which was lo­cat­ed near the south­ern bound­ary, where four apart­ment blocks were to be con­struct­ed.

Armed with this knowl­edge in 2006, El­der asked An­drews to ex­plain what course of ac­tion he adopt­ed when he re­turned to the site in 2008, and what ques­tions he asked, if any.

Aware there had been crack­ing along the slope at the now con­tro­ver­sial site, An­drews said once slope fail­ure oc­curred at a site, it would have been the du­ty of the ge­ot­ech­ni­cal en­gi­neer to con­duct a slope analy­sis "if com­mis­sioned to do that."

Press­ing An­drews to elab­o­rate about the var­i­ous stages nor­mal­ly un­der­tak­en dur­ing a ge­ot­ech­ni­cal sur­vey, El­der said it was re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the ge­ot­ech­ni­cal en­gi­neer to ac­cu­mu­late as much in­for­ma­tion per­tain­ing to the lo­ca­tion, in ad­di­tion to site vis­its and a re­view of all re­ports, maps and pho­tos.

Agree­ing that this was ac­cept­ed to a cer­tain ex­tent, An­drews claimed that a lot of em­pha­sis was be­ing placed on site re­con­ni­sance in this in­stance, but that he con­sid­ered the most im­por­tant as­pect of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be the re­sults of the field work which would de­ter­mine soil prop­er­ties and suit­abil­i­ty.

Fo­cus­ing on An­drews' 2008 site vis­it which al­so co­in­cid­ed with a re­quest from the project de­sign­er Plan­ning As­so­ciates Lim­it­ed (PAL) for an in­de­pen­dent ex­pert to re­view Ge­ot­ech As­so­ciates Lim­it­ed (GA) 2004 re­port, El­der was able to glean from An­drews that he nev­er en­quired about the re­sults of Dr Derek Gay's re­port.

Asked why he had felt it was not nec­es­sary to learn if his own firm's work had been found ac­cept­able by Gay, An­drews said, "I nev­er did and I don't see why I should, if CJIC felt it nec­es­sary, they would have giv­en me that," re­fer­ring to the con­tents of Gay's re­port.

An­drews is the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of GA, while Chi­na Jiang­su In­ter­na­tion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CJIC) was the con­trac­tor who re­tained their ser­vices.

Con­front­ed with the ques­tion that it was the ge­ot­ech­ni­cal en­gi­neer's du­ty to ac­quire all re­ports re­lat­ing to a site's his­to­ry by El­der, An­drews replied, "I could not just go to PAL and re­quest a re­port that was com­mis­sioned by them­selves. It just does not hap­pen."

How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted know­ing that Gay was re­quest­ed to work on the project, but was un­aware if and when a re­port was sub­mit­ted.

He went on to say that it was "com­mon prac­tice in Trinidad, com­pa­nies don't nor­mal­ly give out their re­ports to any­one."

"In fact, it is al­most kept as a se­cret as com­pet­ing firms don't or­di­nar­i­ly let oth­er com­peti­tors have ac­cess to their re­ports," An­drews added.

In­ter­ven­ing at this junc­ture, com­mis­sion chair­man re­tired Jus­tice Mustapha Ibrahim al­so sought to ob­tain some clar­i­fi­ca­tion from An­drews.

Ibrahim asked, "It is one thing not be­ing able to to find out, or not find­ing out whether Dr. Gay or any oth­er per­son had done a re­port on the site. That is one thing, but when the re­port con­cerned your re­port, isn't that a dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion?"

An­drews then re­spond­ed, "I would imag­ine so, and I would imag­ine that it would be pru­dent for the per­son re­quest­ing the re­port to make it ac­ces­si­ble to us, just as they ad­vised us that they were re­quest­ing an in­de­pen­dent re­port."

This prompt­ed the chair­man to again en­quire of An­drews, "You were not in­ter­est­ed to know or to find out what that re­view was?"

An­drews an­swered, "Based on past ex­pe­ri­ence, the norm is not to cir­cu­late such in­for­ma­tion."

Re­quest­ing an ear­ly ad­journ­ment yes­ter­day, so she could at­tend a hear­ing at the high court re­lat­ing to a ju­di­cial re­view of the ap­pli­ca­tion filed by CJIC, in re­sponse to the com­mis­sion's de­ci­sion to make it a par­ty to these pro­ceed­ings, El­der in­di­cat­ed that she would like to con­tin­ue her cross-ex­am­i­na­tion of An­drews next week.

How­ev­er, An­drews is sched­uled to leave the coun­try tonight and will not be re­turn­ing un­til Mon­day, fol­low­ing which he will de­part­ing again on Wednes­day.

Un­will­ing to pres­sure An­drews, Ibrahim in­struct­ed that the cross-ex­am­i­na­tion would con­tin­ue when the next ev­i­den­tiary ses­sion be­gins in Sep­tem­ber.

At a glance

The com­mis­sion of en­quiry was set up to in­ves­ti­gate "the en­tire process which led to the con­struc­tion of the Las Al­turas Tow­ers at La­dy Young Gar­dens, Mor­vant, and all oth­er acts, mat­ters or de­ci­sions done or un­der­tak­en in­ci­den­tal to and in­clud­ing the con­struc­tion" of the project, which in­clude the pro­cure­ment process. Two mul­ti-storey units of the Las Al­turas hous­ing project be­gan falling apart af­ter con­struc­tion and the $26 mil­lion tow­ers were ear­marked for de­mo­li­tion.

They were part of a larg­er project, which was orig­i­nal­ly bud­get­ed at $65 mil­lion and then rose to $90 mil­lion. The com­mis­sion is chaired by for­mer Jus­tice of Ap­peal Mustapha Ibrahim. The oth­er mem­bers in­clude civ­il en­gi­neers Dr My­ron Wing-Sang Chin and An­tho­ny Far­rell. At­tor­ney Laraine Lutch­me­di­al is the sec­re­tary. They were ap­point­ed by Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona last De­cem­ber. Last Sep­tem­ber, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar rec­om­mend­ed an en­quiry in­to the project af­ter rais­ing con­cerns about the two tow­ers.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who was a for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter un­der the PNM, as well as Emi­ly Gaynor Dick-Forde, who suc­ceed­ed him, have dis­tanced them­selves from blame. Row­ley said though he wel­comed the probe, it would be an­oth­er waste of tax­pay­ers' mon­ey.

Le­gal minds

The Com­mis­sion's at­tor­neys in­clude Se­nior Coun­sel Pamela El­der and Jagdeo Singh, in­struct­ed by Alvin Pariags­ingh.

Queen's Coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son and Lar­ry Lal­la are ap­pear­ing for the HDC.

Richard Ma­son, Je­han Mo­hammed, Fay­dia Mo­hammed and Bren­don Sul­li­van are ap­pear­ing for Ude­cott.

Vin­da Ma­haraj and Kirt Wal­rond are ap­pear­ing on be­half of the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment.

Justin Phelps and Jerome Her­rera, in­struct­ed by An­abelle Sook­lal are ap­pear­ing for Ge­ot­ech As­so­ciates Lim­it­ed (GA).

Emer­son John-Charles is ap­pear­ing on be­half of Civ­il En­gi­neer­ing Man­age­ment and Ser­vices (CE­MAS) and Steve Kistow En­gi­neer­ing Ser­vices.