Contractor got stadium contract without tender

A former chief construction engineer at UDeCOTT told the Uff commission nof enquiry into the construction sector and UDeCOTT Friday UDeCOTT handed a multi-million-dollar contract to Turner Alpha Ltd (TAL) without compteting with other firms. Ian Telfer said the contract was to design the Brian Lara Cricket Academy (BLCA) project in Tarouba.

Telfer also said the team within the corporation that is supposed to evaluate the suitability of all consultants and contractors had never evaluated TAL. Telfer was the person in charge of the evaluation team when UDeCOTT awarded the contract.

On Thursday UDeCOTT's lead attorney, Andrew Goddard, told the commission TAL had provided flawed and incomplete designs and that it was solely to blame for the delays and inflated cost of the project.

Kenneth Sirju, one of the enquiry's commissioners, asked Telfer to clarify the issue: "So the technical staff assigned typically to evaluate consultant and contractor suitably were by-passed and Turner had gone directly to the Board for that award, is what you are saying?"

"Yes," Telfer replied.

He also said as far as he had been aware, TAL "were construction managers" and not project designers.

"So you don't know how they got to UDeCOTT, in the first instance, to offer a design proposal for something when they were not designers and they were not asked to compete with anybody else?" Sirju asked.

"I think you should ask the members of the Board that," Telfer responded. Telfer said the UDeCOTT board at the time included the corporation's current executive chairman, Calder Hart.

Former UDeCOTT chief executive officer, Winston Agard, also testified at the enquiry Friday. He held the post when UDeCOTT gave the design contract to BCLA. Agard told the enquiry the normal procedure with construction projects is that "you hire consultants based on a RFP" - that is a Request for Proposals.

Sirju said UDcCOTT received no RFP and Agard told the enquiry as far as he could recall, UDeCOTT's tender rules at the time TAL received its contract in 2005, did allow for the corporation to hire contractors and consultants on a sole selective basis.

He was careful not to say that the sole selective tendering procedures used by UDeCOTT satisfied the rules at the time for sole selective tendering. "I am not saying that at all," he said.