Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

The widen­ing of the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way be­tween the Ch­agua­nas Fly­over and Chase Vil­lage, Ch­agua­nas, will not be com­plet­ed on sched­ule, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan con­firmed yes­ter­day.

Sinanan said sev­er­al fac­tors are to be blamed for the $65 mil­lion project not be­ing com­plet­ed by Au­gust 24.

He ex­plained that there is a need to en­sure qual­i­ty con­trol is not com­pro­mised, af­ter the con­trac­tor on the Ch­agua­nas to En­deav­our leg of the project, Ju­nior Sam­my Con­trac­tors Lim­it­ed, had to re­do some works be­cause the ma­te­ri­als used failed to meet the re­quired stan­dard.

“You have to bring in your ma­te­r­i­al on the job and there is a spe­cif­ic spec that we op­er­ate with so if you win the job you can’t say I have that spec I’m go­ing to use.

“You have to bring it in, we have to test that in the lab and every piece of ma­te­r­i­al has to be test­ed and when you are do­ing the job it is test­ed again. Any time it fails then you have to do it over or show us what you go­ing to do with that spec to bring it up to the stan­dard,” Sinanan said.

Con­tin­u­ous test­ing of ma­te­r­i­al is a nor­mal pro­ce­dure to en­sure qual­i­ty con­trol, he said, adding, “Some­times you will see a place be­ing paved and then af­ter six months it has to be repaved. In most cas­es where you see that, it is be­cause there is the pe­ri­od that it has to be re­done af­ter show­ing signs of fail­ure. Once some­thing hap­pens with­in a pe­ri­od, we re­port it to the con­trac­tor and they have to now go and do it.”

Sinanan said the in­for­ma­tion ob­tained sug­gest­ed that the is­sue at a par­tic­u­lar site stemmed from the un­der­ground foun­da­tion sand that was used.

He said: “They have to now bring that up to a cer­tain stan­dard, which they have done, and the min­istry’s Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy Unit (PURE) will over­see the whole process tak­en to cor­rect it. My in­for­ma­tion is that they would have now got­ten an ap­proval to go for­ward.”

The min­is­ter ex­plained that the ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od to com­plete the project will not be at an ad­di­tion­al cost. He is hope­ful it will be com­plet­ed be­fore the end of the year but it de­pends on the weath­er.

“This year we got an ear­li­er rainy sea­son and the dry sea­son was al­so short­ened and when you have a four to five-hour work day be­cause of the lo­ca­tion of the job, all that will con­tribute to a lit­tle de­lay,” Sinanan said.

Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy Unit (PURE) di­rec­tor Hay­den Phillips said de­spite the set­backs to the project, mo­torists can look for­ward to a re­duc­tion in traf­fic be­fore the re­open­ing of the school term next month, as work on two bridges in the area is al­most com­plete.

“The bridge in Fac­to­ry Road, we will be fin­ish­ing that be­fore school opens to take back that traf­fic. An­oth­er con­trib­u­tor to the ex­cess traf­fic on the road is the Bridal Road bridge, we are al­so fin­ish­ing that by the end of next week.When those two bridges open you will get some sort of re­duc­tion,” he said.