– deny Ramsammy being misled
The supervising engineers for the Hope Canal Project yesterday responded to concerns raised about “substandard” work on the project and rejected a suggestion that Minister of Agriculture, Dr Leslie Ramsammy, was misled about the progress of the works.
R B Latchmansingh and Dr Krishna Narine, who are the engineering consultants for the CEMCO Inc and SRKN’engineering joint venture, in a statement issued through the Ministry of Agriculture, said work is continuing and no contractor has been granted an extension. The project is scheduled to be completed by June next year.
Prominent engineers, Charles Sohan and Malcolm Alli last week sounded alarm bells over substandard work on the Hope Canal Project and urged an independent review. “What we observed with respect to project activities, quality control and the contractors’ abilities to organise and execute the work to complete their contracts on time was not very encouraging,” Alli and Sohan wrote in a letter published in the Stabroek News and which was based on a recent site visit to assess construction progress.
As a result of their findings, they urged Ramsammy to order an independent mid-term review of the project to assess progress with respect to the implementation of project activities focusing on the project implementation plan, its progress in achieving project outcomes, expenditures and the disbursement schedule. “The review will show how skewed the [National Drainage and Irrigation Authority]/consulting engineers were regarding the timely completion of project works and their indifference to costs and the auxiliary works required to make the system functional,” they said. “There can be no doubt that Dr Ramsammy… has been grossly misled that come June 2013 the Hope Canal project will be completed and become functional.”
The Hope Canal has four aspects: over 10 km of channel from the East Demerara Water Conservancy, a bridge across the public road, a conservancy head regulator with three gates, and an outfall at the canal’s Atlantic exit, which will comprise eight gates. The canal’s excavation is being done by the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA), with BK International, Dipcon Engineering and Courtney Benn Contracting Services constructing the other three components.
In their statement yesterday, the consultants denied that Ramsammy has been misled. They said their supervision contract provides for the supervision of the civil works for the construction of the Head Regulator which is a 3-door structure, an elevated 40 m clear span highway bridge and an 8-door relief structure. “We report directly to the NDIA and our reporting mechanism is weekly and monthly reports which cover progress, constraints, financial projections etc. To give the impression that the minister and NDIA are unaware of progress is a very misleading statement. We supervise based upon the terms and conditions of our contract with the Ministry of Agriculture and supervise the contractors on the terms and conditions of their signed contracts with the Ministry of Agriculture,” the engineers said.
They pointed out that the civil works contracts have a start and end date and at this point in time no extensions to any of the contractors have been granted.
With regard to the high level sluice, the consultants noted that a concern has been raised on the design of the foundation which requires 520 timber piles, 120 ft long with the inference being overdesign. They also noted that the next comment was that the piles were driven out of line. “This statement is incorrect. The piles were driven along a straight alignment (peg grid). All piles driven have achieved the required embedment and design blow count values. We recognise however that only along grid lines “S” and “T” there has been a deviation of the pile heads. The NDIA is aware of this situation which is being addressed,” they said.
“If, as the writers suggest, there are too many piles and that the 7-door Abary conservancy was built without bearing piles (approximately 32 miles upriver) we would wish the writers to be honest and compare those soil conditions to the location at Hope,” the engineers added.
According to Latchmansingh and Narine, while they agree that a piled foundation may not be necessary for such a structure in some coastal locations, to generalise and conclude that a piled foundation for the structure is not necessary in all coastal locations may not be necessarily correct. “The design of the foundation of the high level sluice was based on a geotechnical investigation specific to the location of the sluice. It is our considered view that based on the findings of the geotechnical investigation at the site location, a shallow foundation would have compromised the integrity of the structure,” they asserted.
The consultants pointed to a suggestion by Alli that poor soil conditions could halt the project and a concrete roadway supported by piles would be needed to transport soil for the embankment of the canal but said the NDIA, through a carefully designed engineering process, has excavated over 80% of the canal without loss of equipment.
“The 10.3 km canal is being undertaken as a force account operation with supervision by the joint venture. The construction of the canal is being undertaken in phases. There are 3 design profiles which are adopted for the embankment construction,” they added.
The consultants said that in relation to the embankment construction, works have recently commenced in the pegasse area between the crown dam and conservancy dam. “The design here caters for the laying of geotextile and over 200m have been laid and its application approved by the technical advisor from TenCate who is currently visiting the project. To say that the consultants are contemplating how to lay the geotextile is malicious,” they said adding that only 36% of the Hope Canal embankments will require reinforcement with geotextile fabric.
“It was also reported that part of the eastern embankment was on fire, burning uncontrollably and will probably compromise the geotextile fabric if installed. We wish to advise that the fire burnt an area east and north of the alignment of the Hope Canal eastern embankment which is totally outside the wayleave limit of the relief channel. This section of the eastern embankment has not been constructed as yet and when constructed will comprise of wholly suitable borrow fill and geotextile fabric. In any event fire affecting this material is slim since at all times the canal would have water stored at the level of the geotextile,” they said.
With regard to the concern raised that weeds have taken up 40% of the canal waterway, and if not removed, will take over the entire waterway in six months time, they said that a section of the canal downstream of the vegetation is clean indicating that NDIA has awarded a maintenance contract for the removal of weeds from the canal for the completed section of the Hope Canal. In addition, they said, vegetation growing profusely on the embankments is growing on the material to be used for the construction of the embankment and will be removed during the trimming and shaping process.
“With respect to the bridge, the comment that the installed pre-stress units show changes from the original design is disturbing as none of the pre-stressed beams have been moved from the contractor’s pre-cast yard at Onver-wagt. Perhaps the writer is confused about the piles lying on site which have been rejected by the consultants,” they said.
The consultants had also noted that there was an independent team of engineers including international experts who reviewed the design for the project and one of the members from this team was retained to provide technical support to the project. The public was also asked to review the design report, provide comments and recommendations while the design report was forwarded to the Guyana Association of Professional Engineers (GAPE) for information and comments and a response was received, they said.
The Hope Canal is a US$15 million relief channel at the East Demerara Water Conservancy aimed at resolving the flooding usually experienced in the Mahaica, Mahaicony and Abary areas annually during the rainy seasons.
The canal is supposed to function as an alternative to utilising the Lama Stop Off and Maduni Sluice, whose use also led to excessive flooding in those areas.
