Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Con­struc­tion com­pa­ny Chi­na Jiang­su In­ter­na­tion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed has been or­dered by the High Court to pay the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) more than $30 mil­lion in dam­ages re­lat­ed to the con­tro­ver­sial HDC Las Al­turas Project.

Chi­na Jiang­su was award­ed a con­tract of $67.62 mil­lion by UDE­COTT in 2003 to con­struct 297 apart­ments which start­ed in 2004 along La­dy Young Road.  When UDE­COTT re­fo­cused on non-res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment, that con­tract was trans­ferred to the HDC in 2006.

The case dealt specif­i­cal­ly with the struc­tur­al dam­age to build­ing blocks ‘H’ and ‘I’ of the project. That phase of the project start­ed in 2008 and end­ed in 2010. As a re­sult of land slip­page that dam­aged the struc­ture of the blocks, the build­ings that cost around $26 mil­lion to con­struct were even­tu­al­ly de­mol­ished in 2012 at a fur­ther cost of $3.3 mil­lion.

The judg­ment comes more than sev­en years af­ter the HDC filed a claim for dam­ages for breach of con­tract and neg­li­gence con­cern­ing the con­struc­tion of apart­ment and town­house units lo­cat­ed at Stephenville Road, Mor­vant.

On April 19, High Court Judge David Har­ris ruled that Chi­na Jiang­su In­ter­na­tion­al T&T must pay HDC $26 mil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing wast­ed ex­pen­di­ture on blocks ‘H’ and ‘I’—specif­i­cal­ly, pay­ments made to Chi­na Jiang­su; $3 mil­lion for the cost of car­ry­ing out site in­struc­tion 73 to de­mol­ish and make good blocks ‘H’ and ‘I’ of the project; $500,000 rep­re­sent­ing the in­stal­la­tion by Trin­to­plan of three piezome­ters and six in­cli­nome­ters; $110,000 rep­re­sent­ing hoard­ing off-site; US$55,000 rep­re­sent­ing con­sul­tan­cy fee paid to Mueser Rut­ledge; $36,041 rep­re­sent­ing the as­sess­ment of blocks ‘H’ and ‘I’ by Trin­to­plan; and an­oth­er $22,943 for oth­er ser­vices.

The agree­ment be­tween the par­ties to con­struct 90 apart­ment units and 44 town­house units was signed in Jan­u­ary 2008.

Be­fore the Las Al­turas deal, Chi­na Jiang­su had con­struct­ed an­oth­er five hous­ing projects for the HDC.

Chi­na Jiang­su In­ter­na­tion­al was al­so the con­trac­tor for the Tamana In­Tech Park project. The project, ini­tial­ly es­ti­mat­ed to cost $1.1 bil­lion, sky­rock­et­ed to $1.8 bil­lion due to cost over­runs and vari­a­tions from the blue­print. The project was sched­uled to be com­plet­ed in 2010 but did not fin­ish un­til 2014.

At a point in time, how­ev­er, Chi­na Jiang­su was owed $35 mil­lion for project vari­a­tions.

“What re­al­ly stalled the project was the fact that the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion had vari­a­tions with the scope of work, which was not prop­er­ly doc­u­ment­ed. They de­vi­at­ed from the blue­print, which led to cost over­runs. An­oth­er set­back was a re­sult of lit­i­ga­tion from en­gi­neer­ing con­sul­tants and ar­chi­tects. We’ve had a sit­u­a­tion where some of them have sued be­cause of the de­lays in the project,” for­mer UTT chair­man Cur­tis Man­choon said about the project while con­struc­tion was on­go­ing.

Chi­na Jiang­su In­ter­na­tion­al al­so lat­er re­ceived a $0.5 bil­lion con­tract to con­struct the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies South Cam­pus in Debe/Pe­nal in 2012, de­spite the fact that HDC was aware since 2011 that these two brand-new apart­ment build­ings had to be de­mol­ished.

“This speaks to the dan­ger of a siloed ap­proach to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, which the new Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment law will rec­ti­fy,” said char­tered sur­vey­or and for­mer pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try Afra Ray­mond.

For­mer pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (TTCA) Mikey Joseph had said it was “sur­pris­ing” and “ap­palling” that the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) lat­er ap­proved a $509.4 mil­lion con­tract to build the South cam­pus to a Chi­nese com­pa­ny with a poor track record.

A source of po­lit­i­cal de­bate with­in the PNM

The failed Las Al­turas Hous­ing con­struc­tion project was a source of much po­lit­i­cal de­bate with­in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment at the time, with un­con­firmed ru­mours that it led to dis­agree­ments be­tween then prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and then hous­ing min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

An­dre Mon­teil was the chair­man of the HDC at the time, and Faris Al-Rawi was a di­rec­tor of the HDC.

It was al­so a source of a bit­ter dis­pute be­tween the PNM and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. Dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment’s tenure, a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the project was com­mis­sioned in 2014.

“So where did that mon­ey go? We have to an­swer that ques­tion,” then prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

“Should the pub­lic to­day do as the PNM did and sweep this mat­ter un­der the car­pet? Should these high-pro­file PNM mem­bers not be able to ex­plain what hap­pened un­der their watch?”

In Sep­tem­ber 2016, the com­mis­sion’s re­port found that there were no grounds for crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings, but rec­om­mend­ed civ­il ac­tion be tak­en against for­mer UDE­COTT Chair­man Calder Hart, Noel Gar­cia, UDE­COTT and HDC for neg­li­gence.

Fol­low­ing the re­lease of the re­port’s find­ings, Hart and Gar­cia took le­gal ac­tion. They claimed they were not in­formed of the ad­verse find­ings of the re­port and thus, did not get an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond to the claims be­fore its pub­li­ca­tion. Gar­cia lat­er suc­ceed­ed in his le­gal chal­lenge against the com­mis­sion­ers of the Las Al­turas in­quiry as the High Court quashed the find­ings against him.

Chi­na Jiang­su al­so threat­ened le­gal ac­tion if it was not re­moved as a par­ty in the com­mis­sion.

Ac­cord­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley in 2016, the in­quiry that cost more than $24 mil­lion was a po­lit­i­cal witch-hunt doomed to fail. “The Gov­ern­ment had the re­quire­ment to go af­ter the con­trac­tor flat­ly and de­lib­er­ate­ly re­fused to do so. To add in­sult to in­jury, the same con­trac­tor failed to ap­pear be­fore the Com­mis­sion­er of En­quiry be­cause he was too busy build­ing in the new con­tract that was giv­en to them by the said gov­ern­ment in this mat­ter,” he ac­cused.

Afra Raymond

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Ray­mond: We need to en­sure Chi­na Jiang­su ac­tu­al­ly pays dam­ages

Ac­cord­ing to Afra Ray­mond, the judg­ment seems to be fair, as it was a de­sign-build con­tract in which the con­trac­tor is re­spon­si­ble for its sub­con­trac­tors and con­sul­tants as part of the ‘sin­gle point of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty prin­ci­ple.’

He did, how­ev­er, sug­gest the rul­ing, which took sev­en years, was too long.  “This case is al­so sig­nif­i­cant since ours is a Black coun­try which has tak­en prop­er steps to de­fend its pat­ri­mo­ny against multi­na­tion­al con­trac­tors, Chi­nese in this case. That is some­thing sel­dom seen, so we need to reg­is­ter the episode.

“We now need to be vig­i­lant to en­sure that Chi­na Jiang­su, rep­re­sent­ed by for­mer PNM AG John Je­re­mie SC, ac­tu­al­ly pays the dam­ages award­ed by the High Court, amount­ing to $30 M.”

Ray­mond said the un­der­ly­ing les­son of the Las Al­turas mat­ter was that the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s mas­sive pro­gramme en­gen­ders a deep­er set of con­flicts.

“The de­mand of those on the wait­ing list for hous­ing in ur­ban lo­ca­tions can push the pro­gramme in­to cost­ly projects on sites which have re­mained un­de­vel­oped, for what­ev­er rea­son. In this case, an un­suit­able site was used for a high-den­si­ty, hill­side hous­ing de­vel­op­ment and those con­flicts seed­ed these dif­fi­cul­ties,” he said.

He al­so ref­er­enced two pre­vi­ous projects in­volv­ing Chi­na Jiang­su In­ter­na­tion­al, say­ing that they were the con­trac­tors for ‘the long-de­layed UWI Debe Project and UTT Tamana.’ The JCC head­ed by Ray­mond had stat­ed its con­cerns about the Debe project in a  let­ter of May 18, 2012, to then UWI prin­ci­pal Prof Clement Sankat.

Fazir Khan

COURTESY FAZIR KHAN

JCC head: We need to work out mech­a­nisms to dereg­is­ter con­trac­tors guilty of neg­li­gence

Pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try Fazir Khan be­lieves that a re­peat of such an in­stance as Las Al­turas can on­ly be avoid­ed by ex­treme due dili­gence by em­ploy­ers, con­sul­tants, and con­trac­tors.

He was con­fi­dent that the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to Las Al­turas high­light­ed the project’s is­sues, and lessons were learned with­in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try. How­ev­er, he be­lieved the in­dus­try still needs to work out mech­a­nisms by which con­trac­tors who have clear­ly been guilty of neg­li­gence are dereg­is­tered.

“There are pro­ce­dures in the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion for this but some in­ter­pre­ta­tion may be re­quired by the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor,” Khan said.

“Pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion is there to ad­dress mat­ters of trans­paren­cy and val­ue for pub­lic mon­ey dur­ing the pro­cure­ment process up to and in­clud­ing the award of con­tract. What hap­pens in the post-con­tract pe­ri­od like in Las Al­turas does not fall un­der the purview of the new leg­is­la­tion save and ex­cept for some lim­it­ed as­pects of per­for­mance and main­tains of con­trac­tor reg­is­tra­tion.”

Time­line of the project

• In De­cem­ber 2002, UDE­COTT ac­quired the Las Al­turas site.

• ↓In 2003, UDE­COTT, then led by Calder Hart, award­ed a $67.62 mil­lion con­tract to Chi­na Jiang­su In­ter­na­tion­al Cor­po­ra­tion for the con­struc­tion of 297 apart­ments in Mora­vant–the Las Al­turas Project.

• ↓In March 2005, a let­ter was al­leged­ly sent from UDE­COTT’s chief con­struc­tion en­gi­neer in­di­cat­ing that there was sig­nif­i­cant move­ment of the low­er slope of the site where blocks F, G, H and J were lo­cat­ed. Geo Tech As­so­ciates, which was a for­mer par­ty in HDC’s civ­il case, was hired by HDC to pro­vide ge­ot­ech­ni­cal in­for­ma­tion on the site cho­sen. In 2007, Chi­na Jiang­su was award­ed a two-year con­tract of $74.87 mil­lion for 134 units in 20 build­ings. In Jan­u­ary 2008, the sec­ond phase of the project was signed be­tween HDC and Chi­na Jiang­su. Lat­er that year, Ge­ot­ech As­so­ciates pre­pared a sub­soil in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­port for Build­ings H, I and J.                          

• ↓Con­struc­tion work on Build­ings H and I be­gan in De­cem­ber 2008, but less than a year lat­er, dam­age on the ground floor of Build­ing H was ob­served. In Jan­u­ary 2010, build­ings H and I were com­plet­ed.

• ↓How­ev­er, a sub­se­quent re­port by Ge­ot­ech de­ter­mined that there was land slip­page. Civ­il En­gi­neer­ing Man­age­ment and Ser­vices then rec­om­mend­ed that build­ings H and I be de­mol­ished to re­lieve stress on the struc­ture. En­gi­neer­ing con­sul­tants Trin­to­plan Con­sults Ltd al­so found that build­ings H had to be de­mol­ished while build­ing I would al­so like­ly have to be de­mol­ished. In the end, there were more than 100 apart­ment units that were paid for but nev­er com­plet­ed.