Sev­er­al con­trac­tors are get­ting ready to chal­lenge the in­ten­tion by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) to award a huge hous­ing con­tract in East Trinidad to a Chi­nese con­trac­tor.

HDC yes­ter­day is­sued a no­tice of a de­ci­sion to award a con­tract to Chi­na Har­bour En­gi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd to build hous­es at the Cor­po­ra­tion’s San­ta Rosa Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment.

The con­tract, which is to de­sign and build hous­es on the site, is for $475.83 mil­lion.

Chi­na Har­bour was not the low­est bid­der for the con­tract. Ac­cord­ing to a no­tice at­tached to the an­nounce­ment sev­er­al lo­cal con­tract­ing firms sub­mit­ted bids for the project, but were not suc­cess­ful.

Ju­nior Sam­my Con­struc­tion sub­mit­ted a bid for $419.22 mil­lion, Mooti­lal Ramhit & Sons Con­tract­ing sub­mit­ted a bid for $344.15 mil­lion and NH In­ter­na­tion­al (Caribbean) put in a bid of $259.61 mil­lion.

The HDC an­nounce­ment states that there is a stand­still pe­ri­od from Ju­ly 31 to Au­gust 14, 2024.

“Con­se­quent­ly, in ac­cor­dance with sec­tion 35 of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, as amend­ed, the HDC is ini­ti­at­ing a stand­still pe­ri­od of ten work­ing days,” said the HDC no­tice.

Sec­tion 35 of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act states: “35. (2) A procur­ing en­ti­ty shall prompt­ly no­ti­fy each sup­pli­er or con­trac­tor who pre­sent­ed sub­mis­sions of its de­ci­sion to ac­cept the suc­cess­ful sub­mis­sion at the end of the stand­still pe­ri­od.

(3) The no­tice re­ferred to in sub­sec­tion (2) shall con­tain, at a min­i­mum, the fol­low­ing in­for­ma­tion:

(a) the name and ad­dress of the sup­pli­er or con­trac­tor pre­sent­ing the suc­cess­ful sub­mis­sion;

(b) the con­tract price; and

(c) the du­ra­tion of the stand­still pe­ri­od as set out in the so­lic­i­ta­tion doc­u­ments.”

The stand­still pe­ri­od gives bid­ders the abil­i­ty to launch chal­lenge pro­ceed­ings against the in­ten­tion by state com­pa­nies to award con­tracts.

One con­trac­tor, who is on the list of bid­ders, said: “While we have not made a fi­nal de­ci­sion, this award is like­ly to be chal­lenged by us and the project stopped while the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor does its re­view.”

“This in­tent does not con­sti­tute an of­fer or a bind­ing con­tract be­tween the HDC and Chi­na Har­bour En­gi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny T&T. In the event that the HDC or Chi­na Har­bour En­gi­neer­ing are un­able to suc­cess­ful­ly reach agree­ment at the close of ne­go­ti­a­tions, the HDC will con­clude the pro­cure­ment process with with Chi­na Har­bour En­gi­neer­ing and con­tin­ue the same with the next el­i­gi­ble pro­po­nent,” the HDC said