PM satisfied with Caricom HQ design, structure
Queries addressed by engineer
Stabroek News
January 17, 2004
Prime Minister Samuel Hinds says he is pleased with the structural design of the Caricom building under construction at Liliendaal, East Coast Demerara, dismissing claims by some that the building has flaws.
The building has been under much public scrutiny over the past few months. On Thursday, Hinds and a team of officials from the Public Works Ministry, the City Council and S.A. Nabi and Sons Ltd, the contractors, toured the site.
Following criticisms about the integrity of the floor and the strength of the beams, the contractors placed a number of concrete blocks some weighing in excess of 150 pounds on a floor to increase the weight above the design minimum to test the floor's strength. Hinds said the demonstration revealed no failing of the structure, since there was no sign of any shifting of the beams or the floor. He said pending a further detailed analysis, which may indicate some still not recognised mode of failure, citizens can be comfortable with what has been designed and constructed so far.
"We have a country to build and at great speed. We know from experience that misunderstandings, oversights and mistakes may creep into anything that we do. We must welcome earnest concerns and questionings prompted by the desire to be helpful in avoiding errors or pointing (to) a better way," Hinds said in a statement released to this newspaper yesterday.
He added that there was need to become good at quickly resolving any questions as it was better to investigate a thousand earnest concerns to avoid one error slipping through, or to miss an opportunity for improvement.
The City Council at its last statutory meeting had asked the contractors on the project to supply a structural engineering analysis as well as relevant structural steel certificates for the project. Moreover, Town Clerk Beulah Williams had sent a document to members of the committee raising questions about the design of the structure and pointing out unconfirmed reports that a section of the building had experienced failure in July or August last year.
These concerns were raised by City Engineer, Cephas James and Deputy Mayor Robert Williams during the site tour on Thursday and were clarified by the supervising engineer. The engineer gave a detailed analysis of the building, during which there was no objection by the City Council officials. However, the council is still to submit a letter to the contractor, outlining its concerns. The council also has concerns with respect to the canopy, means of escape in case of a fire, sizes of the doors and rooms. Most of the city's concerns were based on a letter written by Malcolm Alli which appeared in a Guyana Association of Professional Engineers news-letter.
Alli said that during a visit to Guyana he noticed that the steel beam connections at the upper floors of the building in one area were unconventional and not in accordance with the standard code of practice in many parts of the world for design and construction of steel buildings.
But the site engineer said there was nothing unconventional about the connections, adding that the connections could be found in updated building design books in Britain.
Alli wrote that the steel structure is on a 20 ft grid with a concrete slab on a composite steel decking structure. He pointed out that the connection of the secondary beams in the grid to the main supporting steel beam consists of welding a steel plate at the edges, top and bottom of the main beam flanges to which the secondary is then bolted. These observations, the engineer said, were unfounded and were dealt with in a report which Technical Adviser of the Ministry of Works, Walter Willis had prepared. Willis, who was on site Thursday, reported that the sizes of the beams and their connections were intact and they matched the structural design.
The $1.65 billion contract for the construction of the building was signed on April 17, 2002. The building was to have been completed within 18 months of the signing.