Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ist

Joshua.Seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

The de­ci­sion by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UDe­COTT) to sole-se­lect a con­sul­tant for two ma­jor in­fra­struc­ture projects has prompt­ed in­dus­try sources to call for greater trans­paren­cy from the state com­pa­ny re­gard­ing the deals and fu­ture ur­ban de­vel­op­ment con­sul­tan­cy con­tracts.

Last week, UDe­COTT con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that In­ter­na­tion­al Project Ini­tia­tives Lim­it­ed (IPI) was sole-se­lect­ed for two con­sul­tan­cy as­sign­ments through a process per­mit­ted un­der the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Prop­er­ty Act (2015).

IPI was award­ed con­sul­tan­cy con­tracts for the San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front Project and the In­vaders Bay Project, with a com­bined val­ue ex­ceed­ing $6.2 mil­lion.

“IPI’s ten­der was du­ly eval­u­at­ed by the Statu­to­ry Com­mit­tee un­der the Act (PDAC) in ac­cor­dance with OPR’s Guide­lines. The PDAC com­mit­tee com­pris­es pro­fes­sion­als em­ployed at UDe­COTT, name­ly the Di­vi­sion­al Man­ag­er of Le­gal or des­ig­nate, Di­vi­sion­al Man­ag­er of Fi­nance, and sub­ject-mat­ter ex­pert—Di­vi­sion­al Man­ag­er, Con­struc­tion or des­ig­nate. The award of the ten­der was du­ly pub­lished by UDe­COTT on 30 Ju­ly 2025 and 11 Sep­tem­ber 2025, as strict­ly re­quired un­der the Act.

“IPI’s con­tract price in­cludes pro­fes­sion­al re­im­bursable costs such as fees for ar­chi­tects, en­gi­neers (civ­il, MEP, struc­tur­al, and coastal), quan­ti­ty sur­vey­ors, fi­nan­cial spe­cial­ists, IT pro­fes­sion­als, graph­ic artists, and oth­er ex­pens­es in­clud­ing equip­ment rental and li­cens­es,” the state com­pa­ny said in a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia.

IPI is owned by Se­bas­t­ian Padding­ton, a for­mer di­rec­tor of the Sport Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SPORTT). He was among 14 for­mer SPORTT di­rec­tors or­dered by the High Court in Ju­ly to pay $40,000 each for fail­ing to per­form their du­ties in ap­prov­ing a $34 mil­lion con­tract un­der the con­tro­ver­sial Life­S­port pro­gramme.

Padding­ton was present at the launch of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Port-of-Spain Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Project two weeks ago, where me­dia re­ports re­ferred to him as UDe­COTT’s Pro­gramme Man­ag­er.

Ac­cord­ing to UDe­COTT doc­u­ments, the In­vaders Bay con­tract was ex­e­cut­ed on 30 Ju­ly for $2.59 mil­lion. IPI’s web­site in­di­cates it pre­vi­ous­ly pro­vid­ed an In­vaders Bay Con­cep­tu­al Mas­ter Plan in 2015.

IPI stat­ed its mas­ter plan in­clud­ed a re­view of base­line in­for­ma­tion, a struc­tured plan, a reg­u­la­to­ry and land-use plan, green con­cepts and ur­ban de­sign, the ap­pli­ca­tion of planned unit de­vel­op­ment reg­u­la­tions, and site de­vel­op­ment stan­dards and guide­lines.

UDe­COTT doc­u­ments show IPI’s San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front project con­tract was ex­e­cut­ed on 11 Sep­tem­ber 2025 for $3.63 mil­lion. Ac­cord­ing to IPI’s web­site, the com­pa­ny had pre­vi­ous­ly worked on the project in 2019 and 2021.

In 2019, IPI pro­vid­ed ser­vices in­clud­ing pre­lim­i­nary analy­sis, cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis, fi­nan­cial analy­sis, im­ple­men­ta­tion strat­e­gy and fi­nanc­ing arrange­ments, and post-im­ple­men­ta­tion fea­si­bil­i­ty as­sess­ments.

In 2021, the com­pa­ny de­liv­ered fur­ther ser­vices: a re­view of the ex­ist­ing fea­si­bil­i­ty study, de­vel­op­ment of a de­tailed mas­ter plan, guide­lines for fu­ture wa­ter­front projects, and a pol­i­cy frame­work to guide plan­ning for ar­chi­tects and en­gi­neers.

The wa­ter­front project un­der­went sev­er­al con­sul­ta­tions un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment (2010–2015) be­fore the PNM ini­ti­at­ed work in ear­ly 2021. Progress has been de­layed by land ac­qui­si­tion and oc­cu­pa­tion is­sues.

When asked about ur­ban plan­ning con­sul­tan­cy con­tracts award­ed to IPI un­der the PNM gov­ern­ment for the San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front and In­vaders Bay projects, for­mer UDe­COTT Chair­man Noel Gar­cia (Oc­to­ber 2015–May 2025) said: “I am not aware of any con­tract be­ing award­ed for ur­ban con­sul­ta­tion for those projects.”

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact IPI and Padding­ton mul­ti­ple times over the past week via phone, text, and email but re­ceived no re­sponse.

Pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil, Fazir Khan, said all ur­ban de­sign con­sul­tan­cy awards must com­ply with the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act.

“This means awards should ad­here to open ten­der­ing and full trans­paren­cy re­quire­ments un­less a doc­u­ment­ed ex­cep­tion is ap­plied. Giv­en the im­por­tance of the over­all plan for T&T, com­pet­i­tive ten­der­ing en­sures the best re­sources are pro­cured.

“The In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Cen­tre statu­to­ry ap­provals con­tract was award­ed on 6 March 2023, ap­prox­i­mate­ly one month be­fore the Act’s op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion. As such, on­ly the IWC con­tract po­ten­tial­ly falls out­side the new regime, where­as the oth­ers clear­ly fall with­in its scope.

“For con­tracts dat­ed af­ter April 2023, like the In­vaders Bay and San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front con­sul­tan­cies, com­pli­ance with the PPDP­PA—in­clud­ing open ten­der­ing—is a le­gal re­quire­ment un­less a nar­row­ly de­fined ex­cep­tion is trans­par­ent­ly jus­ti­fied and record­ed. If se­lect or sole ten­der­ing was used for these lat­er con­tracts with­out ap­pro­pri­ate le­gal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion or OPR over­sight, these awards could po­ten­tial­ly be chal­lenged un­der the Act,” Khan said.

Ac­cord­ing to the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Pro­cure­ment Meth­ods and Pro­ce­dures) Reg­u­la­tions, 2021, pub­lic bod­ies en­gag­ing in sin­gle-source se­lec­tion must: gain ap­proval with de­tailed jus­ti­fi­ca­tion; re­quest a pro­pos­al or con­tract price from the sup­pli­er; and en­gage in ne­go­ti­a­tions un­less un­fea­si­ble.

The Act spec­i­fies cri­te­ria for sin­gle-source se­lec­tion, in­clud­ing:

Con­tin­u­a­tion of pre­vi­ous com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment with­in the last 12 months, where the con­trac­tor per­formed sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly and the con­tract price is rea­son­able.

Ac­qui­si­tion of spare or re­place­ment parts for ex­ist­ing equip­ment. Pro­cure­ment of goods sim­i­lar to ex­ist­ing equip­ment if sin­gle-source se­lec­tion is more cost-ef­fec­tive.

Ser­vices de­liv­ered by a sup­pli­er pos­sess­ing rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion and da­ta, with sat­is­fac­to­ry pri­or per­for­mance and rea­son­able pric­ing. Ser­vices usu­al­ly pro­vid­ed by a pub­lic body.

Cas­es of emer­gency.

Sec­tion 14 of the Act em­pha­sizes that sole-source se­lec­tion should be used on­ly in ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances.