Ed. Ministry paid $28M for design of St. Rose’s High School’s foundation, then abandoned it

Dec 29, 2020 News

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Kaieteur News – Details from the recently laid Auditor General Report of 2019 shows that the Ministry of Education (MoE), under the APNU+AFC, had paid a consultancy firm $28M for the design of the foundation for the $412M St. Rose’s High School, but later abandoned the design because it was “inadequate”.
The AG’s report recalled that on July 31, 2017, the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) had awarded a consultancy contract for the design and supervision of the new St Rose’s High School in the sum of US$134,790/G$28M. It was indicated that the letter of acceptance was issued to the contractor on August 30, 2017, where the duration of the service was from August 30, 2017 to July 30, 2018 for the design phase, and the supervision was to commence immediately upon the signing of the contract for the construction works.
Audit examination revealed that the consultant was responsible for all soil investigations and to design the foundation for the school, slated to cost taxpayers $412M. However, the report states, it was discovered that the ministry had paid another consultant to review and redesign the foundation, based on a decision that the original foundation was inadequate.
It is against this that the AG’s report highlighted that “The ministry paid the first consultant for designing an inadequate foundation for the school building.”
Further examination of the project file had also revealed that the ministry had engaged two additional consultants to provide services for redesigning the foundation for the school. “However, it was noted that the initial supervising consultant was required to conduct soil investigations and design a foundation for the building as part of his contract. As such, it is unclear why the ministry engaged two other consultants to redesign the foundation, given the fact that they had accepted the foundation design in the first place and went ahead with tendering and awarding the contract,” the report said.
The AG report also states that a second consultancy contract was awarded in the sum of $6.575M by NPTAB on the January 30, 2019 for an independent assessment to be conducted to determine whether a deep foundation was required for the construction of the building. It pointed out, however, that no details regarding the tendering and award of this consultancy contract was seen, and it is unclear what procurement procedures were utilised by the ministry in awarding this second consultancy contract. “A third consultant was paid the sum of $432,000 for the calculation of loads of the building for redesigning the foundation,” it stated too.
Kaieteur News, in a series of articles, had exposed the controversy regarding the construction of the school, which was awarded to Courtney Benn Contracting Services Limited some two years ago. The contract was signed on August 8, 2018 with a duration of 18 months.
On August 17, 2019, the NPTAB had awarded an approval to increase the contract sum by $59.595M due to the scope of the contract being extended to include a change to the foundation design whereby a deeper foundation was required using timber piles. As such, the contract sum increased from $352.710M to $412.304M, with the duration of the contract extended by 20 months, resulting in a revised completion date of August 23, 2021.
Physical verification carried out in early September by Kaieteur News had revealed that no works were in progress on site, save and except for the completion of the driving of 224 timber piles for the foundation.
It was noted that Courtney Benn Contracting was paid a second advance payment of $28.963M on January 10, 2020, having already received an initial advance payment of $52.906M.
But against this point, the report states, “At this time no significant works had commenced on site and as such, the first advance payment made would not have been expended. An analysis of the payments made to the contractor revealed that having received the first advance payment of $52.906M, the contractor was further paid the sums of $5.186M and $1.379M under valuations two and three respectively, followed by several small payments for security charges. Therefore, it is unclear what this first advance payment was used for.”
Even against these concerning details, the Education Ministry went ahead and had paid the contractor a second advance. “No evidence was seen whereby the contractor used the advance payments exclusively to pay for plant, machinery, and equipment, materials and other expenses required directly for the execution of the contract, as required under clause 34.2 of the General Conditions of contract. This clause also stated, “The contractor shall demonstrate that Advance Payment has been used for the purposes of execution of the Contract by supplying copies of invoices or other documents,” the report states. It was further noted that both advance payment bonds expired since March 2020 and none of the advance payments were recovered.
Shortly after the pile driving exercise, Courtney Benn Contracting had abandoned the work site, following which the People’s Progressive Party/ Civic (PPP/C) government terminated its contract.

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