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The engineer responds to the audit report

Jun 02, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,

I have read Saykar Boodhoo’s audit report as it relates to the construction of GMC building and am greatly amused at the spurious allegations and baseless recommendations contained therein, most of which is based on poor analysis and ‘hear say’ information. Before I go into detail, the background of the project needs to be explained.
GMC embarked on the process of constructing a new office building in 2009. I was employed by the ASDU Department of the Ministry of the Agriculture at the time and was asked to prepare the design and relevant documentation for the construction of the building. The budget for the project was 24M which was unrealistic based on the required size of the building. Due to the unrealistic budget, the project had to be tendered on three separate occasions between 2009 and 2010 before a contractor was identified to undertake the construction within the budget.
The contractor identified on the third round of tendering was Constantine Engineering and Construction Services who was the lowest bidder as well as the only bidder within the budget. It was recognized that the contractor did not have the necessary experience however the Tender board decided to accept the contractor’s bid as GMC’s management did not want to go to tender for a fourth time.
When the construction got under way I was asked to overlook the project however given my workload at ASDU clear instructions were given by the Director of ASDU that time should only be spend on projects for external agencies (such as GMC, NAREI, etc.) after 4:30 and on weekends.
Given this limitation on supervision and an inexperienced contractor it is obvious that the work would not have been of the best quality. Nevertheless every attempt was made to have the project completed satisfactorily although this did not happen. Defective work was identified and payments were withheld from the contractor which subsequently led to him leaving the job as he was unable to remedy the defects.
The defects that I identified at the time were the leaking roof and the wrong type of wood used for the internal walls. This led to a sum of $1,633,772 being withheld from the contactor which was greater than the cost of the internal walls and the defective part of the roof. On no occasion was any old zinc used on the roof, a few of the sheets were placed badly and had to be removed and repositioned which led to holes in those sheets.
With regard to the problem of peeling of the paint in certain areas, no such problem existed at the time up to the end of the defects liability period, as such I cannot be held responsible for that. With regard to the flaking of concrete, the only area where this occurred that I know about is in the vicinity of the generator which was as a result of the generator exhaust being bolted to the masonry wall which was not designed for the vibration from the generator.
With regard to the change in ceiling material, that was a decision taken from a technical standpoint in collaboration with GMC’s management. Clearly, if Saykar Boodhoo was worth his salt, he would have reviewed the background and factual information on the project before making spurious allegations and baseless recommendations. He is auditing a project and does not know what was paid for and what wasn’t for, and is going around tarnishing people’s reputation to gain cheap points with the Government.
Hanniel Madramootoo

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