Tufton, contractors meet Monday to thrash out Cornwall renovation delays
Published:Monday | December 21, 2020 | 12:02 AM
Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton and contractors involved in works at the Cornwall Regional Hospital are slated to have a no-holds-barred meeting at 10 a.m. Monday after both sides traded blame for the bungled renovation of the Type A St James facility.
Tufton, speaking at a Gleaner Editors' Forum recently, said the Government would be putting the next phase of renovations to international tender, citing inexperience as the key factor for a slew of project overruns by locals.
But Don Mullings of M&M Construction, who was contracted to undertake roof repairs at the hospital, suggested that the Government has been guilty of changing the scope of works.
"Even the brightest contractor, you can’t go there when they hire you to put on doors, and suddenly, you go there to take off the roof,” Mullings quipped.
READ: Tufton Tackled Over Cornwall
However, Tufton told The Gleaner on Sunday afternoon that while he did not seek to broad-brush architects and engineers as incompetent, he would not resile from his stance that they were out of their depth in hospital construction.
Monday's meeting will address matters of concern regarding runaway costs linked to multiple variations, among other issues, the health minister said.
"I have clearly noted the responses and I expected some of those responses," Tufton said.
"Clearly, the local professionals would raise objection around any critique of their interests."
But Tufton said that his pronouncements have been based on briefings he has received on bloated contraction costs.
At the forum, Tufton lamented that there had been too many recalibrations, re-evaluations and variations which he said was "substantially" a function of inexperience.
Phase Two of the project is expected to cost just about $1 billion, and phase three, the largest, which will go to international tender, approximately $3 billion.
Offsite rental of facilities is also in the region of $1 billion, the minister revealed.
Glaister Ricketts, president of the Jamaica Institution of Engineers, has been critical of the minister's comments at the forum.
He said that the Cornwall renovation was standard project management.
Ricketts said last Thursday that Cornwall was the poster child of state bureaucratic projects – “a classic example” of runaway spending on work that was not properly scoped.
“ ... As soon as the contractor gets on site, the client, whether it’s Government or private people – but the Government is famous for it – they suddenly increase the scope of work. Sometimes it doubles,” Ricketts said.
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