Government has cancelled the construction contract for the long-delayed National Emergency Operations Centre in McNamara after paying out more than half its value, and officials hope to hire a new contractor next month, according to Premier Natalio “Sowande” Wheatley.
Mr. Wheatley gave the update on the long-delayed project — which is meant to house the Department of Disaster Management and serve as a headquarters for senior officials during emergencies — last Thursday in the House of Assembly in response to questions from opposition member Mitch Turnbull.
Mr. Wheatley said the project has a total budget of nearly $10.8 million, and an initial construction contract worth almost $10.2 million was awarded in January 2021 to Tandem Development and D&B Heavy Equipment Services Limited.
To date, Mr. Wheatley said, government has paid the two companies nearly $5.7 million.
Another $606,000, he said, has gone to the consultant managing the project — Virella Crespo and Associates — which received a contract for about $607,000.
Years of delays
When officials broke ground on the project in February 2021, they said it would be completed in about two years.
But following repeated delays, the last observed works completed on the project occurred in December 2023, when the contractor poured concrete to the roof slab, according to Mr. Wheatley.
“This marked an important milestone for the project as the entire structure was now enclosed, and work [was expected to] commence in earnest on internal and external finishing components,” Mr. Wheatley said.
Since then, however, the work stalled and no progress was made despite two extensions granted to the contractor — one on Nov. 18, 2023, and another on Sept. 30, 2024, according to the premier.
“In the interest of moving this critical project forward, a decision was taken to terminate the contract in accordance with the general conditions of the contract,” he said. “A termination letter dated [Nov. 1, 2024,] notified the contractor of government’s intent to terminate the contract.”
Since the notification, he added, the project manager has “updated the designs and specifications to complete the works and drafted new tender documents to procure the same.” He added that the documents are under review and will soon be forwarded to the Caribbean Development Bank, which provided the post-Hurricane Irma recovery loan that is funding the project.
CDB approval is expected late this month, allowing the new procurement process to start in August, the premier said.
No completion date
Mr. Wheatley said he could not give a completion target date for the project because “it is heavily dependent on the schedule of the new contractor.”
However, he did estimate the centre won’t be operational for an additional 18 to 24 months.
“We recognise that despite the contractor’s significant progress on the building’s main structure, completing the project under the original arrangement was proven difficult and unachievable,” Mr. Wheatley said.
“Therefore, as a government, we made the bold but necessary move to terminate the contract with the hopes of sourcing another contractor or group of contractors to complete the project.”
Challenges with contract
He blamed the project’s challenges in part on the government’s decision to sign an “admeasured contract.”
This type of contract, he explained, “simply means that the contractor [is only] paid for the quantity of works completed.”
The new plan, he said, is to award the next contractor or contractors with a “lump-sum contract” instead.
This approach “will provide the contract with more flexibility to complete the work under our proposed schedule of works,” Mr. Wheatley said. “We anticipate that a new contractor or group of contractors and the change to a lumpsum arrangement will help to create efficiencies in execution of the project moving forward and minimise the potential for delays.”
Within budget?
In a follow-up question, Mr. Turnbull (R-D2) asked the premier for more details.
“Was [the admeasured contract] the main reason why the building stalled — because of how payments were being received by the contractor?” he asked. “And if so, how do we expect that this new format will benefit the new contractor versus the one that you had before?”
Mr. Wheatley replied that the challenges with the contractor went beyond the contract’s format.
“I would say part of what contributed to the challenges with the completion under the original contract had to do generally with disagreements between the contractor and the consultant in terms of certainly how things were being interpreted by both and some significant variation in terms of expectations on both sides,” Mr. Wheatley replied.
He added that he believes a lump-sum contract will help address such challenges.
“Because of course when you’re just being paid for works completed, and there’s a significant variation as it pertains to what the consultant interprets and the contractor interprets, that can lead to challenges in terms of what payments should be expected at any particular time,” he said.
In his second follow-up question, Mr. Turnbull asked if the premier could confirm if the project would stay within its original budget.
“I would hesitate to give any information as it pertains to final budgeted cost, because of course we’re going through the process of having a new contractor,” Mr. Wheatley replied. “They’ll have to put in bids, etcetera, and that will really determine what the final price is.”
Long time coming
Though construction on the new NEOC began in 2021, plans for the building stretch back more than a decade earlier.
In 2010, architectural designs, engineering drawings and geotechnical studies were completed and submitted for a $4.3 million, 17,762-square-foot building designed to withstand various types of natural disasters.
However, Cabinet never approved funding for that project despite repeated warnings from then-DDM director Sharleen Dabreo-Lettsome that the DDM’s McNamara headquarters — which served as the NEOC — couldn’t withstand a major storm.
When Hurricane Irma destroyed the building in September 2017, forcing officials to flee during the eye of the storm, she was proved right.
Attempts to contact D&B and Tandem were not successful, and the website for Virella, a Puerto Rico-based company, is no longer live.