Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Sev­er­al high-pro­file projects yet to be com­plet­ed by the Gov­ern­ment will come un­der fo­cus by the now ful­ly-im­ple­ment­ed Pro­cure­ment Act, ac­cord­ing to for­mer lec­tur­er in the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ Civ­il & En­vi­ron­men­tal En­gi­neer­ing de­part­ment Derek Out­ridge.

He said in ad­di­tion to projects yet to be­gin, the likes of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way and Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way Ex­ten­sion Project to Man­zanil­la by NID­CO; the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal Project and Port-of-Spain Hos­pi­tal Cen­tral Block Project by Ude­cott; and Va­len­cia to To­co Road Ex­pan­sion by Pure will all fall un­der the law.

Out­ridge, who is al­so a char­tered quan­ti­ty sur­vey­or/project man­ag­er and at­tor­ney, said, “Once the act is pro­claimed, all the un­com­plet­ed projects that are on­go­ing, as well as any new projects that are to come, have to com­ply with the pro­cure­ment law.

“What is com­plet­ed is done. It doesn’t fall un­der the leg­is­la­tion. It is the un­com­plet­ed con­tracts. Every­thing will have to be in ac­cor­dance with the un­com­plet­ed project in ac­cor­dance with the pro­cure­ment law. Now that it has been brought to the Gov­ern­ment’s at­ten­tion, a lot of these state agen­cies are go­ing to have to pull up their socks, and pull it up very quick­ly.”

Asked which projects are like­ly to be on the radar for po­ten­tial cost over­runs, he said there are “mil­lions of dol­lars in con­struc­tion claims not ad­dressed by AE­COM Group Inc on be­half of NID­CO for the Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion Project, as well as mil­lions in claims still to be ad­dressed by Ude­cott for the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal’s Cen­tral Block Project and the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal Project.”

Derek Outridge

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Out­ridge added that while state agen­cies pre­vi­ous­ly award­ed con­tracts to con­trac­tors us­ing their own data­bas­es, that will no longer be the case once the leg­is­la­tion is pro­claimed.

“Any state en­ti­ty—which would in­clude UDE­COTT, NID­CO, all of them—who re­ceive pub­lic funds for projects would fall un­der the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion. It would mean an end to these agen­cies se­lect­ing their own con­trac­tors from their own data­bas­es. They can on­ly se­lect con­trac­tors from the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor’s data­base,” he said.

The Gov­ern­ment has al­lo­cat­ed more than $2 bil­lion on in­fra­struc­ture projects in 2023 for roads and bridges un­der PURE and NID­CO, drainage and trans­port projects, in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy projects, as well as WASA projects.

An­oth­er $1.9 bil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed for pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary, and ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion school projects un­der the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, hous­ing projects un­der the HDC, as well as recre­ation­al projects un­der SPORTT.

Fazir Khan

COURTESY FAZIR KHAN

Mean­while, the pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try, Fazir Khan, con­firmed that all pro­cure­ment ac­tiv­i­ty from April 26 falls un­der the OPR’s over­sight.

How­ev­er, he was not con­fi­dent that the pro­cure­ment law would bring much scruti­ny to mega projects like the Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion to Point Fortin, the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way Ex­ten­sion to Man­zanil­la, the Va­len­cia to To­co Road, the ANR In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port Ter­mi­nal Build­ing Project, and the In­te­grat­ed Fish­ing Port and Fa­cil­i­ties at Gran Chemin in Moru­ga.

He said that those projects would most like­ly fall un­der the ‘al­ready award­ed’ cat­e­go­ry.

“This retroac­tive ef­fect was re­moved in ear­ly re­views by the Gov­ern­ment. This is why the JCC and oth­er Civ­il So­ci­ety groups have been call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to op­er­a­tionalise the leg­is­la­tion. The road to chang­ing the be­hav­iour around pub­lic mon­ey starts in earnest now. Most of the cap­i­tal projects tar­get­ed by the 2023 Bud­get would have been award­ed by now.”

Khan, a civ­il en­gi­neer, com­ment­ing on which sec­tors would like­ly come un­der the most­scruti­ny, said, “Con­trac­tors get a large por­tion of the over $4 bil­lion bud­get­ed for cap­i­tal projects to be spent by the Works and Trans­port and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment min­istries. This does not in­clude new projects by HDC, nor does it in­clude new schools or re­pair con­tracts com­ing out of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.”