MPs have raised concerns over the cost and execution of the refurbishment of the former George Hicks High School campus, saying that there should have been greater oversight regarding how fast the project was progressing and how much needed to be done.
Julie Hunter, MP for West Bay West, raised the issue in the recent meeting of the Public Accounts Committee held to consider Auditor General Patrick Smith’s report on government financial management.
The report said that the Ministry of Education (MoE) undertook the refurbishment of the campus, now home to the Cayman Islands Further Education Centre, at a cost of almost $2 million, with the funds coming through emergency procurement procedures.
Delay in decision-making
The initial approved budget was $184,000 and, said the report, “The MoE was unable to justify the use of the emergency provision for the project, as the condition of the campus had been known to the MoE for several years, but it had failed to take timely corrective action. Therefore, the reliance on emergency procurement procedures was a result of delays in decision-making rather than a genuine emergency as defined in legislation.”
Hunter added that the ministry later engaged a consultant to conduct a value-for-money assessment of the work done and, according to the consultant’s report, the value of the emergency work was approximately $651,000, way off the $2 million amount spent.
In response, Cetonya Cacho, chief officer at the Ministry of Education and Training, said that she wasn’t at the ministry at the time but had reviewed all the documents and spoken to the team about what had happened. She said that while the project was supposed to finish in December 2023, it was not completed until well after.
“The funding for Project B, which is the George Hicks campus, was reduced to keep in line with the revised affordability limit for the entire new John Gray project, which was split into three projects,” she said, “Project A being what is now the new John Gray campus, Project B, the refurbishment of what we know as the George Hicks site, and then Project C which would have been the demolition of the old John Gray [site] … where we now have those fields.”
Construction firm McAlpine, which had been awarded the contract for the work, took possession of the old George Hicks site in March 2023, and discovered, said Cacho, “that due to the aging facility, there was a number of issues with buildings that went beyond the scope of what they were initially contracted for, that would need to be rectified.”
She added, “With McAlpine on site, [Department of Education Services] didn’t have access, nor the facilities team, to the site until later in the year, which happened to be in June of 2024 when DES went onto the site with their facilities team through an agreement with McAlpine.
At this point it was discovered what extra work was needed to be done, she said, noting that at this point “McAlpine would have been on this site for about a year [and] the Department of Education Services (DES) would not have had access to the site for any general maintenance, landscaping, painting or anything like that during that time.”
Good practice
This was questioned by Hunter, who said, “If I’m building a home, how are you going to say that I can’t go to my home just because my contractor is there? That doesn’t make any sense to me. DES should have still had authority to go onto the campus to see what was going on, that would just have been just good practice.”
In reply, Cacho said that there had been a project team that reported to the steering committee on the progress of the work, but “it was an active construction site [and] keep in mind as well that DES runs the facilities for all 16 of the government school sites.”
Asked Hunter, “So you’re saying maybe they didn’t have time then to put much effort or oversight into the construction or the work done at George Hicks?”
Replied Cacho: “At that time the work happening … George Hicks fell outside the remit of the Department of Education Services. It was under the responsibility of the contractor, McAlpine.”
Cacho said that by the time the DES went onto the site in June/July 2024, “that’s when they went in and they saw the extensive amount of work that needed to be done to make the school safe for staff and students.”
She added, “It’s incredibly important … that the last year of school is not disrupted for students because what they gain from that is incredibly important for the next steps in their lives. So, I am informed that the team wanted to get those works done and the health and safety issues addressed as quickly as possible in order to try to get students in and reduce the disruption on their final year of learning.”
Asked about the difference between the initial budget, the $2 million spend and the valuation of the work done coming in at $651,000, Cacho said that the $184,000 was for labour only and during the course of the project, several issues were discovered that were not originally in the scope of work, including the discovery of asbestos onsite, which then had to be removed.
Opposition Deputy Leader Kenneth Bryan said that he hoped lessons were learned, particularly around monitoring.
“I’m kind of concerned to hear that members of the Department for Education Services didn’t have a more regular stop in, pop in, check and ‘see what’s going on’ thing,” he said, “I think that’s probably where the biggest failing happened.”
Regarding the changing timeline and budget, Bryan said that it was important to learn to work more closely with contractors as well as ensuring what contracts actually covered, “because this notion that ‘this wasn’t part of the scope’ means that somebody dropped the ball of understanding exactly what we’re going to do, how long we’re going to do it for, and what timelines are available.”
Cacho said that the team at the DES along with the Ministry of Education created a ‘lessons learned’ report about the issue, identifying where they believed things had gone wrong and made a list of areas that they would be rectifying going forward, “because we don’t want to be in this situation again.”
