Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

The mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar Tre­strail Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) project has stalled af­ter con­struc­tion firm Ricky Raghu­nanan Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed was flagged and di­rect­ed to un­der­take re­me­di­al works for struc­tur­al de­fects.

Two in­de­pen­dent en­gi­neer­ing re­ports found ma­jor is­sues with the con­struc­tion work car­ried out by Ricky Raghu­nanan Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed on zones D and E-1 of HDC’s Tre­strail 1R de­vel­op­ment.

The in­de­pen­dent en­gi­neer­ing re­port raised con­cerns about the foun­da­tion be­ing un­able to sup­port the ap­plied loads of the two-storey struc­tures and raised is­sues with in­suf­fi­cient or lack of re­in­forced beams among oth­er mat­ters con­trary to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

Since Ricky Raghu­nanan has been asked to un­der­take re­me­di­al works on the struc­tural­ly flawed con­struc­tion project, the pro­posed 110-apart­ment Tre­strail de­vel­op­ment 1R Project, es­ti­mat­ed at $100 mil­lion, has been left hang­ing.

The HDC is now run­ning more than four years late on its promised de­liv­ery date while some 180,000-plus ap­pli­cants through­out the coun­try are await­ing homes.

The Tre­strail Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment, which start­ed in June 2017, is lo­cat­ed off La Re­source Road in D’Abadie.

Ac­cord­ing to the HDC, 936 res­i­den­tial town­hous­es and apart­ment units were sup­posed to be con­struct­ed in two pack­ages—Pack­age 1R–452 hous­ing units and Pack­age 2–484 hous­ing units.

In Sep­tem­ber 2018, the HDC gave out 80 of the sin­gle-fam­i­ly units.

Oth­er parts of the project re­main in­com­plete, in­clud­ing zones D and E-1 of Pack­age 1R, award­ed by HDC to con­trac­tors Ricky Raghu­nanan Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed in 2020 un­der a de­sign-build-fi­nance FIDIC con­tract to de­liv­er 110 town­hous­es.

The HDC pur­chased the 128-acre for­mer horse farm es­tate from the Tre­strail fam­i­ly in Sep­tem­ber 2011 for a re­port­ed sum of $77 mil­lion.

Two weeks ago, Op­po­si­tion MP Roodal Mooni­lal called for a probe in­to the stalled project, al­leg­ing that mil­lions of state funds could be wast­ed. He al­so ac­cused the HDC of fail­ing to ex­er­cise its “fidu­cia­ry du­ty” with re­spect to the con­di­tion of about 100 units at the hous­ing project.

Con­trac­tor must bear cost of rec­ti­fy­ing de­fects—HDC

Hous­ing Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, de­fend­ing the HDC’s po­si­tion, said the con­trac­tor had to fund all re­me­di­al works. She added that the com­pa­ny had not re­ceived any pay­ment for the work done so far.

“The HDC has en­tered in­to a sit­u­a­tion where the con­trac­tor must re­me­di­ate at his own cost, so this talk that Oropouche East is say­ing that the tax­pay­ers will have to pay mil­lions and mil­lions of dol­lars is to­tal­ly fab­ri­cat­ed and to­tal­ly un­true,” Robin­son-Reg­is said in Par­lia­ment dur­ing the 2024 Bud­get de­bate.

In re­sponse to ques­tions from the Sun­day Guardian, the HDC con­firmed that it award­ed a de­sign-build-fi­nance FIDIC con­tract to Ricky Raghu­nanan Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed in 2020 for the con­struc­tion of 110 town­house units.

The HDC said its board of man­age­ment had con­cerns about cer­tain struc­tur­al is­sues on the project and as a re­sult, com­mis­sioned CEP Lim­it­ed to con­duct a study on the struc­tur­al is­sues af­fect­ing the project.

“The study iden­ti­fied a num­ber of de­fects and, in ac­cor­dance with the em­ploy­ers’ claim of the de­sign-build-fi­nance con­tract, the HDC is en­ti­tled to make a claim for its cost of en­gag­ing an in­de­pen­dent com­pa­ny—CEP Lim­it­ed in re­la­tion to de­fec­tive works. The board and man­age­ment called on the con­trac­tor to rec­ti­fy the de­fects in ac­cor­dance with the method­ol­o­gy out­lined in the CEP re­port. The HDC said it will not take pos­ses­sion of these town­hous­es or pay the con­trac­tor un­til these de­fects are reme­died. No pay­ments have been made to Ricky Raghu­nanan to date,” the HDC’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment stat­ed. The amount paid to CEP Lim­it­ed for its ser­vices, how­ev­er, was not giv­en de­spite be­ing re­quest­ed.

How bad was con­struc­tion work at Tre­strail?

Sun­day Guardian ob­tained copies of the in­de­pen­dent en­gi­neer­ing re­ports pre­pared for HDC. The en­gi­neer­ing re­port was sub­mit­ted on Au­gust 30, 2022, by CEP Lim­it­ed en­gi­neers Kern Sub­ar and Hay­ley Chilton and lat­er re­viewed and ap­proved by two se­nior en­gi­neers.

CEP was in­vit­ed by the HDC to pro­vide a struc­tur­al en­gi­neer­ing so­lu­tion for struc­tur­al de­fects ob­served on 11 town­house blocks in zones D and E-1 at HDC’s Tre­strail 1-R Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment.

“The town­house blocks that are the sub­ject of this re­port in zones D and E-1 are in­com­plete and it was ob­served that a num­ber of these town­house blocks in these two zones, which have been con­struct­ed with vary­ing fin­ished floor el­e­va­tions, have ex­pe­ri­enced cracks at the grade change. These blocks are iden­ti­fied by the HDC as 23, 29, 30, 31, 35, 36, 37, 38, 42, 43 and 45,” the re­port stat­ed. The re­port found is­sues with im­posed loads and load com­bi­na­tions, the foun­da­tion and the re­in­forced con­crete first-floor slab.

Foun­da­tion

Bear­ing ca­pac­i­ty and set­tle­ment analy­ses car­ried out by CEP sug­gest­ed that the foun­da­tion for some of the town­house blocks would not be able to sup­port the ap­plied loads, mean­ing that ex­ist­ing soil con­di­tions would need to be im­proved to achieve an in­creased bear­ing ca­pac­i­ty and to re­duce the ex­pect­ed set­tle­ment of the struc­ture. It was found that the town­house blocks were un­able to sup­port the ap­plied loads of the two-storey build­ings.

 “The town­house blocks that will re­quire soil im­prove­ment work be­low the sub-sur­face (foun­da­tion) ei­ther whol­ly or par­tial­ly across the build­ing’s foot­print ac­cord­ing to the find­ings of the ge­ot­ech­ni­cal re­port are as fol­lows: 30, 31, 35, 36, 37 and 38.

“Based on our dis­cus­sions with var­i­ous tech­ni­cal pro­fes­sion­als in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try, pres­sure grout­ing is con­sid­ered to be the pre­ferred soil im­prove­ment tech­nique to im­ple­ment for this project,” the re­port stat­ed.

Re­in­forced con­crete first floor slab

The re­port found that based on a vi­su­al in­spec­tion of cored con­crete sam­ples of the first-floor slab of Block 35, no re­in­forc­ing bars were ob­served. It al­so found that the con­crete com­pres­sive cylin­der field strength from a sam­ple of a first-floor slab was one-third of the min­i­mum re­quired strength.

“The con­crete sam­ple ex­tract­ed from the first-floor slab of Unit C of town­house Block 35 yield­ed a con­crete com­pres­sive cylin­der field strength of 8.8 N/mm squared which is well be­low the min­i­mum con­crete com­pres­sive cylin­der strength of 28N/mm square at 28 days spec­i­fied on the struc­tur­al draw­ings,” ac­cord­ing to the re­port.

The re­port stat­ed that the al­ter­na­tive cor­ru­gat­ed gal­vanised roof sheet­ing used to sup­port the sus­pend­ed first-floor slab was not a ma­te­r­i­al rec­om­mend­ed for that ap­pli­ca­tion as it lacked the ma­te­r­i­al prop­er­ties for a con­crete bond to be achieved and, there­fore, no struc­tur­al de­sign checks could be per­formed.

“Un­like the com­pos­ite met­al floor deck­ing, the cor­ru­gat­ed gal­vanised roof sheet­ings are smooth and do not have an em­boss­ment pat­tern man­u­fac­tured in­to the sides at reg­u­lar in­ter­vals which will al­low the con­crete to bond with the met­al deck­ing pan­el as the con­crete cures,” CEP’s re­port stat­ed.

It was rec­om­mend­ed by the con­sul­tant en­gi­neer that a load test be car­ried out by an in­de­pen­dent test­ing agency so that a de­ter­mi­na­tion could be made on whether to de­mol­ish and re­build the first-floor slab or not.

Im­posed loads and load com­bi­na­tions

The re­port found that loads for light fix­tures and plumb­ing ser­vices were not con­sid­ered in the orig­i­nal de­sign, but were in­clud­ed in the struc­tur­al mod­el and sub­se­quent struc­tur­al de­sign checks pre­sent­ed in the CEP Lim­it­ed re­port. It al­so found that the wall ren­der load, ac­cord­ing to de­sign stan­dards, was not ap­plied in the orig­i­nal de­sign.

Ge­ot­ech­ni­cal Re­port

A ge­ot­ech­ni­cal in­ves­tiga­tive re­port was sub­mit­ted by EISL Lim­it­ed on Au­gust 10, 2022, af­ter EISL was in­vit­ed to pro­vide ser­vices by CEP Lim­it­ed. An orig­i­nal ge­ot­ech­ni­cal re­port for the site was car­ried out by Trin­to­plan Con­sul­tants Lim­it­ed in Oc­to­ber 2013. Sun­day Guardian, how­ev­er, did not ob­tain a copy of that re­port.

Ac­cord­ing to EISL’s re­port, the fail­ures ob­served on-site have been known to be as­so­ci­at­ed with non-con­for­mance to ba­sic con­struc­tion meth­ods and qual­i­ty con­trol re­quire­ments as it re­lates to build­ing foun­da­tions.

  “In the case of cut and fill sites, the over­sight of prop­er com­paction pro­ce­dures and the use of in­ap­pro­pri­ate fill ma­te­r­i­al has proven to be the rea­sons for fail­ure … Our desk­top study for the site sug­gests that a con­sid­er­able amount of cut and/or fill ac­tiv­i­ties were car­ried out on the site be­fore con­struc­tion. How­ev­er, no in­for­ma­tion on cut and fill lev­els was ob­tained from the client. Draw­ings and topo­graph­i­cal sur­veys which would usu­al­ly in­di­cate built lev­els and el­e­va­tions could not be ob­tained from the client.

  “From the re­sults of our bear­ing ca­pac­i­ty and set­tle­ment analy­sis, it was de­ter­mined that the foun­da­tions of some of the units will be un­able to sup­port the ap­plied loads of the two-storey struc­tures,” EISL’s re­port stat­ed.

The re­port’s find­ings warned that in­suf­fi­cient bear­ing ca­pac­i­ty can re­sult in gen­er­al shear fail­ure–a rup­ture of un­der­ly­ing soil fol­lowed by bulging of soil sur­face around the foot­ing; lo­cal shear fail­ure–a fail­ure pat­tern ob­serv­able on­ly im­me­di­ate­ly be­low the foot­ing; and/or punch­ing shear fail­ure–a lo­cal shear fail­ure that could oc­cur around con­cen­trat­ed loads or col­umn heads.

To avoid these pos­si­ble out­comes, EISL rec­om­mend­ed im­prove­ment of the ex­ist­ing soil con­di­tions via grout­ing (the in­jec­tion of ce­ment or chem­i­cal grout in­to the soil to fill voids), soil/ce­ment sta­bil­i­sa­tion or mi­cro-pil­ing to in­crease the den­si­ty of the soil.

EISL’s re­port stat­ed that its en­gi­neers in­ves­ti­gat­ed dam­age to many of the build­ing clus­ters where ver­ti­cal and di­ag­o­nal cracks with­in the front and back walls oc­curred. It found that the cracks ap­peared to be re­lat­ed to build­ing dead load con­di­tions.

 “1) It was ob­served that wa­ter was pond­ing near the foun­da­tion of town­house Block 37.

  2) There was ev­i­dence of un­even set­tle­ment of the soil sup­port­ing the town­house struc­tures. The set­tle­ment was ev­i­dent by the pres­ence of ver­ti­cal cracks, pre­dom­i­nant­ly at the grade changes of the town­house blocks, stepped cracks and di­ag­o­nal cracks ob­served in­ter­nal­ly and ex­ter­nal­ly

  3) The ex­posed fill lay­er be­neath the dri­ve­way slab of town­house block 37 showed that the fill does not ap­pear to be well-com­pact­ed as rec­om­mend­ed in the ge­ot­ech­ni­cal re­port (orig­i­nal),  “the re­port’s field in­ves­ti­ga­tions found”.

Raghu­nanan: We didn't do shod­dy work, it's just some lit­tle re­pairs

Con­trac­tor Ricky Raghu­nanan con­firmed that he has re­ceived no pay­ment to date as it is a fi­nance-and-build project. He said the com­pa­ny has not hand­ed over the project yet, adding that they put up their own mon­ey for the work done so far. He said it was not an is­sue. It is just a mat­ter of him start­ing back the job to fin­ish it. How­ev­er, he could not give an es­ti­mat­ed com­ple­tion date for the project.

“It’s not an is­sue with them. It’s just for us to fin­ish up what we have to do and hand it over. It’s not a sto­ry, bud­dy. It’s some­thing like you buy a car from a bank and when you pay off the bank, you get the ve­hi­cle in your name. So once we fin­ish it and hand it over to HDC, then they could do any­thing.

“You should dri­ve on the project and see it, then talk. It’s just some lit­tle re­pairs. That’s all we have to do. The work was nev­er shod­dy or any­thing like that. We have plen­ty fin­ished al­ready, but you have to fin­ish every­thing be­fore you hand it over. It’s about two or three build­ings that have to be hand­ed over be­fore we fin­ish every­thing. When you do­ing a big project like that, you will have lit­tle re­pairs to do,” Raghu­nanan said.

Con­trac­tor gets jobs from the Works Min­istry

Al­though flagged for struc­tur­al de­fects on the Tre­strail project, Raghu­nanan Lim­it­ed con­tin­ues to be award­ed con­tracts by the Works Min­istry

The award of the first con­tract came eight months af­ter be­ing asked to rem­e­dy the de­fects.

Mean­while, the com­pa­ny has since been award­ed at least four more con­tracts by the State worth more than $7.4 mil­lion through the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port–Three High­way Di­vi­sion projects in 2023 worth $4.3 mil­lion were award­ed to Ricky Raghu­nanan on May 24, Sep­tem­ber 7 and Sep­tem­ber 20, and one drainage con­tract was award­ed on Sep­tem­ber 22, 2023, worth $3.14 mil­lion.

The con­tracts were award­ed by lim­it­ed bid­ding where­by a list of com­pa­nies to be in­vit­ed to sub­mit bids is not de­ter­mined by pre­qual­i­fi­ca­tion but through mar­ket re­search.

The Sun­day Guardian reached out to Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan and the Works and Trans­port Min­istry’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment on Thurs­day and Fri­day to ask whether there is any com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween min­istries or gov­ern­ment agen­cies when a con­trac­tor is flagged for sub­stan­dard work and is un­der con­sid­er­a­tion to do work for an­oth­er min­istry.

The Sun­day Guardian want­ed to find out whether, in light of con­cerns over the Tre­strail Project, the min­is­ter is con­fi­dent about the qual­i­ty of work that Ricky Raghu­nanan Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed can de­liv­er.

How­ev­er, the min­istry has not yet re­spond­ed to the Sun­day Guardian.

Com­pa­nies owned by Ricky Raghu­nanan have re­ceived con­tracts from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port in the past. Among them, in ear­ly 2015, Ricky Raghu­nanan Scaf­fold­ing Con­tract­ing Lim­it­ed re­ceived two con­tracts from NID­CO worth $3.4 mil­lion for im­prove­ment Works to a re­tain­ing wall for Pi­p­i­ol Road Ex­ten­sion in Can­taro Vil­lage and the con­struc­tion of a 110m re­in­forced con­crete wall at Le Buoys Ravine in Care­nage.

In 2017 and 2018, Ricky Raghu­nanan Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed and Kall Co Lim­it­ed re­paired land­slides along the La­dy Young Road and North Coast roads. Both com­pa­nies were paid $2.7 mil­lion by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port.

Min­is­ter Sinanan said in re­sponse to ques­tions raised in the Sen­ate about hir­ing Raghu­nanan Lim­it­ed in Ju­ly 2018 while over­see­ing land­slide work along the La­dy Young, “Our pol­i­cy now is clear, un­less the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is­sues a di­rec­tive that the Min­istry is not to deal with con­trac­tors, we have to deal with con­trac­tors.”

In May 2019, the com­pa­ny re­ceived a con­tract from the MOWT for the hire of me­chan­i­cal equip­ment/ve­hi­cles ‘as and when re­quired’ for one year.

How the Pro­cure­ment Act will pro­tect tax­pay­ers

Pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try (JCC) Fazir Khan said while the JCC can­not com­ment specif­i­cal­ly on the project, the coun­cil is not aware that a state-wide pol­i­cy for ad­dress­ing con­trac­tors’ eval­u­a­tion and per­for­mance ever ex­ist­ed.

“In our opin­ion, a pol­i­cy would not have been dif­fi­cult to de­vel­op but im­ple­men­ta­tion across hun­dreds of gov­ern­ment agen­cies and spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­nies would have been hard to im­ple­ment. Not on­ly that, the ef­fi­ca­cy of such a sys­tem would have been lim­it­ed with­out leg­is­la­tion that con­tains puni­tive ac­tion for trans­gres­sors.  How­ev­er, with the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act of 2015 (as amend­ed), such a pol­i­cy is no longer nec­es­sary,” Khan said.

He said with the es­tab­lish­ment of the pro­cure­ment de­pos­i­to­ry, all sup­pli­ers and con­trac­tors are man­dat­ed to reg­is­ter elec­tron­i­cal­ly and up­date the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion to keep their reg­is­tra­tion alive. The JCC pres­i­dent said once pre-qual­i­fied, con­trac­tors can be used by any procur­ing agen­cies.

“The new leg­is­la­tion al­so has man­dates for per­for­mance re­view and pos­si­ble dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion by any procur­ing en­ti­ty based on poor per­for­mance or oth­er rea­sons as pre­scribed in the act. If this hap­pens, the dis­qual­i­fied con­trac­tor can­not be used by any oth­er state agency or procur­ing en­ti­ty. Once the sys­tem is op­er­at­ed prop­er­ly un­der the new leg­is­la­tion, with the in­de­pen­dent over­sight by the OPR, there is built-in trans­paren­cy and cross-sec­tor in­for­ma­tion flow, which will ob­vi­ate the need for any oth­er pol­i­cy that re­lates to con­trac­tor per­for­mance and across-the-board de-reg­is­tra­tion,” Khan stat­ed.