Honest contractors feeling the squeeze

Dear Editor,

In response to my letter which appeared in Guyana Times on September 29 regarding cost overruns at the Kato Primary School (KPS) being constructed in the Potaro-Siparuni Region, Lindon Stephney, apparent Minister of State Joseph Harmon’s spokesman, was of the opinion that these were not due “to poor design but poor management of the greedy and corrupt”. I wish to state I never sought to challenge Minister Harmon’s statement with respect to problems associated with construction costs for KPS but disagreed with his claims which it seemed were devoid of facts and were based on false notions for contact costs increasing.

It is evident from his missive that Mr Stephney lacks knowledge of the engineering profession as well as with contracting and the bidding process. Before a contractor is allowed to bid for a project he must be pre-qualified. Unfortunately this needed requirement is not applied in Guyana and therefore anyone could be a contractor. The KPS project comprising the plans, specifications, Bill of Quantities and other tender documents were put out for bid and the lowest bidder (not the lowest evaluated bidder) was awarded the contract based on the total costs for the listed items which appeared in the Bill of Quantities.

During construction the contractor probably noticed discrepancies in the Bill of Quantities and concluded that changes were needed to the plans and/or specifications for project completion. These had to be checked by the Supervising Consultant (SC), and if they had any merit they would have been submitted for review and approval by the Government Officer responsible for this Project. If approved, change orders would have been authorised and their costs negotiated among the Government, SC and the contractor. Therefore the Government was fully aware of all variations for KPS and had given approval for their costs. This had nothing to do with low bidding or corrupt practices as claimed.

Minister Harmon if he is the competent authority should have authorized an audit to determine the cost and time overruns for this project and the reasons thereof, as is usually the case with most large projects, as well as to ascertain if there was culpability and to avoid recurrence of mistakes. Contrary to Mr Stephney’s claim that cost overruns may well have been due to poor project design as well as ill prepared specifications, Bill of Quantities, and tender documents. It also may have been due to the Government’s request for design changes to the project during construction. An audit would have revealed the causes.

If shoddy works are found the contractor has to rectify them at his expense. However, if there was collusion and shoddy works were covered up then Minister Harmon knows what has to be done, and he should act accordingly.

A large segment of the budget for the Ministry of Education is allocated for constructing and maintaining schools and other educational institutions and facilities. It is evident the existing organisation responsible for these works lacks competency. Hence the need to re-organize the Ministry to include a School Construction Division directly responsible to the Minister and staffed with qualified personnel to provide architectural and engineering services to design and build educational facilities for Guyana to generally accepted standards.

Mr Stephney is probably aware that similar problems had faced New York City some 25 years ago and a School Construction Authority was established under its Board of Education. The change has been extraordinary for the learning environment.

Mr Stephney acknowledges that there has been a change in Government and something needs to be done urgently “to root out bad contractors and so-called supervising consultants”. He has however failed to notice that the APNU/AFC now in their sixth month of governance have recently extended the contract and is paying a further $4.2M to one of the so-called supervising consultant for KPS, a Project with many shortcomings which he has failed to identify, and is so critical about.

Finally, the Government should seriously consider pre-qualifying contractors and incorporate performance bonds in its contracts. This will eliminate politically-connected inexperienced contractors, and enable the Government to recover costs from those who have performed poorly despite their experience.

Yours faithfully

Charles Sohan