Gail Alexan­der

It is now up to lo­cal con­trac­tors to fin­ish the con­struc­tion of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal’s Cen­tral block.

This, af­ter the ini­tial con­trac­tor, Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Group (Caribbean) Group Lim­it­ed, pulled out of the project last Wednes­day, cit­ing chal­lenges in con­tin­u­ing.

An ap­proach sim­i­lar to what was used to re­store the Red House will now be used to com­plete the project. It will max­imise lo­cal con­tent and is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide greater op­por­tu­ni­ty for lo­cal con­trac­tors and gen­er­ate em­ploy­ment, the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (UDe­CoTT) said yes­ter­day in an up­date on the project.

The block was con­demned due to its aged struc­ture and dam­age from a 2018 earth­quake. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley turned the sod for a new Cen­tral Block in No­vem­ber 2019. In Jan­u­ary, how­ev­er, Row­ley con­firmed work had stalled amid is­sues with SCG. The con­trac­tor had moved to ter­mi­nate the con­tract last No­vem­ber.

In Jan­u­ary, UDe­COTT con­firmed the foun­da­tion and ground floor slab were com­plet­ed and the erec­tion of the struc­tur­al as­pects had com­menced.

But yes­ter­day, UDe­COTT de­tailed the sit­u­a­tion lead­ing to SCG’s fi­nal ter­mi­na­tion no­tice re­cent­ly.

UDe­COTT stat­ed, “A num­ber of is­sues arose dur­ing the project, such as de­lays as­so­ci­at­ed with the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, sup­ply chain is­sues and nu­mer­ous, di­verse claims by the con­trac­tor, SCG (Caribbean) Group Lim­it­ed.”

By let­ter dat­ed No­vem­ber 5, 2021, the SCG com­pa­ny is­sued a ter­mi­na­tion no­tice of its con­tract with UDe­COTT. The erec­tion of steel­work halt­ed short­ly af­ter­wards in No­vem­ber 2021, as the con­tract ter­mi­na­tion took ef­fect on No­vem­ber 19, 2021.

UDe­COTT stat­ed that sev­er­al meet­ings were held with the con­trac­tor in an at­tempt to re­solve the is­sues and pro­ceed with the project.

While dis­cus­sions were on­go­ing, UDe­COTT pro­ceed­ed with work such as as­bestos abate­ment and de­mo­li­tion of the ex­ist­ing Cen­tral Block and im­por­ta­tion of the re­main­ing steel. UDe­COTT has pro­cured 65 per cent of the steel thus far.

“The (pan­dem­ic) lock­down in Shang­hai has de­layed the de­liv­ery of the re­main­ing 35 per cent,” UDe­COTT said.

It added, “De­spite the ef­forts, the con­trac­tor is­sued a let­ter dat­ed April 8, 2022, cit­ing a num­ber of chal­lenges in con­tin­u­ing the project, such as the con­tin­ued lock­down in Shang­hai, is­sues in re­la­tion to its staff and lo­gis­ti­cal is­sues it faced procur­ing ma­te­ri­als. The con­trac­tor in­di­cat­ed that it be­lieves it will be bet­ter for the T&T Gov­ern­ment to find an­oth­er con­trac­tor to com­plete the project. How­ev­er, they are will­ing to sup­port the project.”

As a re­sult, UDe­COTT’s board, and sub­se­quent­ly the Cab­i­net, ap­proved a new ap­proach for com­plet­ing the project.

The work will now be di­vid­ed in­to sev­en pack­ages and the ten­der for the first pack­age will be is­sued next Tues­day. This in­cludes com­ple­tion of the su­per­struc­ture, which en­com­pass­es com­ple­tion of the re­main­ing steel­works, shear walls and slab.

Oth­er pack­ages in­clude builders’ work and me­chan­i­cal, elec­tri­cal and plumb­ing, med­ical equip­ment, fur­ni­ture and ICT equip­ment.

UDe­COTT added, “This new ap­proach would be ben­e­fi­cial, as works can com­mence al­most im­me­di­ate­ly and be se­quenced to cause no down­time. The ten­der process would pro­vide the op­por­tu­ni­ty for spe­cialised and gen­er­al con­trac­tors to be award­ed por­tions of the work and it would elim­i­nate over­heads by a main con­trac­tor. Of great im­por­tance, it would al­so max­imise lo­cal con­tent as it would pro­vide greater op­por­tu­ni­ty for lo­cal con­trac­tors and gen­er­ate em­ploy­ment. “

UDe­COTT not­ed, “This ap­proach was suc­cess­ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed with the Red House Restora­tion Project. The Red House was com­plet­ed in record time and cre­at­ed hun­dreds of jobs.”

As­sess­ment by UDe­COTT of all con­struc­tion works at the Cen­tral Block will be com­plet­ed and equip­ment will be in­stalled by March 2024. Com­mis­sion­ing of equip­ment will be com­plet­ed by mid-May 2024, al­low­ing for sub­se­quent project han­dover.