DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has dis­missed Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ac­cu­sa­tion of mis­man­age­ment of pub­lic funds on the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port De­vel­op­ment project, which she claims has in­curred $431 mil­lion in cost over­runs due to ex­ces­sive de­lays.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the claim at a UNC cot­tage meet­ing in Las Lo­mas on Mon­day night, where she al­leged that Mott Mac­Don­ald, an en­gi­neer­ing and de­vel­op­ment con­sul­tan­cy firm en­gaged by the Min­istry of Fi­nance, had high­light­ed sev­er­al con­cerns in its eval­u­a­tion of the project.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Row­ley said, “I don’t wish to en­gage the Op­po­si­tion Leader in any of her search for rel­e­vance.”

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, which Guardian Me­dia re­viewed, three main is­sues emerged as the most sig­nif­i­cant fac­tors im­pact­ing the project’s progress:

1. Lack of bal­ance be­tween con­trol and risk al­lo­ca­tion cou­pled with de­fi­cient risk man­age­ment by all par­ties. These is­sues point to a lack of ex­pe­ri­ence in terms of man­ag­ing “turn-key” con­tracts and al­most non-ex­is­tent pre­vi­ous air­port con­struc­tion and com­mis­sion­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

2. Lack of prop­er con­tract in­cen­tives to achieve ob­jec­tives. These is­sues point to de­fi­cient draft­ing of the con­trac­tu­al struc­ture and the fail­ure to con­sid­er the main ob­jec­tives of the project.

3. Claims Res­o­lu­tion (amongst oth­ers Struc­tur­al De­sign) - It points out a lack of ef­fec­tive Project Man­age­ment, im­pact­ing the past and weigh­ing heav­i­ly on the way for­ward.

Oth­er is­sues in­clud­ed a lack of con­ti­nu­ity of project roles, in­tro­duc­ing dif­fer­ent res­o­lu­tion cri­te­ria, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and li­a­bil­i­ty as well as re­port­ing in­con­sis­ten­cies con­spir­ing against de­ci­sion mak­ing. Mott Mac­Don­ald said it re­ceived five dif­fer­ent pro­grammes be­tween De­cem­ber 2023 and Jan­u­ary 2024. Pro­gramme in­con­sis­ten­cies and long lead pro­cure­ment sched­ules were al­so flagged.

The re­port al­so said NID­CO dis­missed its over­sight con­sul­tant, CEP Ltd, in Ju­ly 2022, fur­ther hin­der­ing the project’s progress.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed the firm was con­tract­ed for $27,675,075.94 and was fired for re­fus­ing to “rub­ber-stamp” sub­stan­dard work to en­able a soft open­ing of the air­port ear­ly next year. She sug­gest­ed it was a strat­e­gy to se­cure po­lit­i­cal ad­van­tage ahead of the gen­er­al elec­tion.

She sup­port­ed her claim by ref­er­enc­ing a re­port by con­struc­tion con­sul­tan­cy firm Gleeds, which said based on time­lines pro­vid­ed by the con­trac­tor, Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Caribbean Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, and the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T, com­mis­sion­ing ac­tiv­i­ties are ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by June 23, 2025.

In the re­port, Gleeds warned against host­ing a soft open­ing be­fore the con­trac­tor’s com­mis­sion­ing, test­ing, and train­ing pe­ri­od, sched­uled to con­clude on March 31, 2025.

“So, the Gov­ern­ment is try­ing to rush the open­ing of that ter­mi­nal with­out ad­e­quate test­ing and com­mis­sion­ing of the equip­ment. I can tell you that they will not make the dead­line to open the ter­mi­nal next year. Do you know why? Chi­na Rail­way has now in­formed the Min­istry of Fi­nance that it’s ex­pe­ri­enc­ing se­ri­ous cash flows due to in­creased costs and pend­ing claims and if these are not im­me­di­ate­ly ad­dressed will cause fur­ther de­lays in com­plet­ing the project,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She said Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, on re­ceiv­ing that com­plaint, pro­posed that all pay­ments for vari­a­tions cat­e­gorised as ap­proved, in­struct­ed and an­tic­i­pat­ed, to­talling ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$14.2 mil­lion ($96.5 mil­lion), be paid to Chi­na Rail­way for vari­a­tions which fur­ther bal­looned the price.

She warned that a UNC gov­ern­ment would hold any­one found com­mit­ting this act ac­count­able.

Al­leg­ing in­suf­fi­cient over­sight, Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­demned NID­CO’s man­age­ment of the project.

“From the start, the project was mas­sive­ly over­priced,” she said, ac­knowl­edg­ing that it was ini­tial­ly priced at $1.28 bil­lion and rose to $1.7 bil­lion be­cause of cost over­runs.

Mott Mac­Don­ald sug­gest­ed re­mov­ing NID­CO from di­rect man­age­ment and bring­ing in an in­ter­na­tion­al firm with ex­per­tise in air­port con­struc­tion.

As of De­cem­ber 2023, a pre­lim­i­nary as­sess­ment re­vealed the project faced a 26 per cent cost over­run com­pared to the orig­i­nal con­tract price, along with a 131 per cent de­lay in the com­ple­tion time­line.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said by Sep­tem­ber, the project had al­ready cost tax­pay­ers $702.5 mil­lion and with land ac­qui­si­tion and con­sul­tan­cy ex­pens­es to­talling $251.76 mil­lion, the over­all ex­pen­di­ture, in­clud­ing land costs, would amount to $954 mil­lion.

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning de­ferred com­ments on the claim Im­bert, with the lat­ter say­ing Im­bert will is­sue a de­tailed press re­lease.