Unbelievable
By Andre Bagoo Wednesday, April 1 2009
Trinidad & Tobago Newsday“UNBELIEVABLE”, “terrible” and “totally impracticable”. That was how engineer Arun Buch described the design for the $885 million Brian Lara Stadium in Tarouba yesterday as he appeared as an independent expert witness before the Uff Commission of Inquiry into Udecott and the construction sector.
Buch, a civil engineer who specialises in structural engineering, criticised the stadium project saying it contained a “high level of over-design”.
“I have never seen anything like this...there was design, over-design and then some,” he said. “What was specified....way back in 2005 was totally impractical to build. It was unbelievable as to how anybody could have offered that as a practical solution to how you construct this.”
The engineer said there were major defects in the design for the project, which was done mainly by the firm of Turner Alpha Limited. He argued that work should never have been allowed to commence before these defects were sorted out. For example, he noted that key issues in the design of columns and joints on the project had not been worked out before the award of contracts.
“The joints and these humongous columns were not sorted out but contracts were awarded with those things still hanging and you can see what has happened...These contracts were awarded with all the pregnant problems,” Buch said, as he used a ruler to point to slides placed on display on a projector in the second floor courtroom of the Winsure Building, Port-of-Spain. “You can see the scale of the joints. This is the best that the contractor could design. But that is horrible. That really is terrible but that is what ended up being built.
“When one examines this...I don’t know what to say. This is one of the most humongous things I’ve ever seen for a building like this,” he said referring to a picture of a column at the site.
He revealed the structure of the stadium includes a 1,400-tonne steel roof. According to Buch the roof has a per square metre weight of 24 pounds, comparable to the weight of a highway- overpass.
“I’ve designed overpasses with a weight of 25 pounds per square metre but it’s a roof we are talking about!” he said. Overall, he said, the project has consumed 292 kilogrammes of steel per square metre. In contrast, the Ato Boldon Stadium in Couva, he said, used 80 kilogrammes per square metre. “That is more than twice the amount of steel and nobody blew a whistle,” he lamented.
Yet, he placed the blame for this at the hands of project managers/designers Turner Alpha Limited. He noted while Turner Alpha had in August 2006 recommended the project’s main builder Hafeez Karamth Limited (HKL) be fired, this should have come earlier since it was clear HKL could not have completed the convoluted designs by March 2007. He said Udecott was not at fault in not intervening in the design process saying, “Udecott is not required to know all these things.”
Buch also said there were problems with the handling of the soil at the site of the stadium. These problems he said, should have been anticipated. “That’s the first thing one should have seen,” he said, noting the stadium is being built in “sapatay” or highly absorbent clay soils which dominate the sedimentary landscape of south Trinidad. This piqued the attention of commissioner Israel Khan SC, who noted, “they (Turner Alpha) did not know about sapatay, but any gardener would be able to tell you about that. That would have avoided millions of dollars being spent and they did not even need a consultant; a gardener could have said that.”
Buch also criticised the fact that the project was built on a hilly terrain and this caused millions of dollars worth of excavation and exacerbated the soil problems.
“Somebody tried to force the stadium into the hill rather than get away from the hill,” he said. Buch, 67, was born in India but has lived and worked in Trinidad for the last three decades. He is the founder of Arun Buch and Associates. Among the projects he has worked on as structural engineer are: the Eric Williams Financial Complex, the Ato Boldon Stadium, the Manny Ramjohn Stadium in Marabella and Tobago Plantations in Lowlands, Tobago (now owned by Vanguard Holdings Limited).
Buch is the author of a Udecott report on the Brian Lara Stadium. That report has been kept confidential because it is at the heart of a legal dispute. However the report–which was read by the commissioners in the inquiry under strict conditions–triggered them to invite Buch to give expert advice on the project.
He has also been mandated by the commissioners to produce an independent report into two other Udecott projects.
Lara stadium on wrong spot—engineer
RICHARD LORD | 8:25 PM
Trinidad Guardian
Published: March 31st, 2009Consulting Engineer Arun Bush says a location close to the Mannie Ramjohn Stadium in Marabella would have been better to construct the Brian Lara Cricket Stadium. He said if that venue was chosen many of the problems with the soil at the chosen Tarouba site would not have arisen. He said the facility would have cost less than $300 million.
He said it was almost impossible for the chosen contractor Hafeez Karamath Ltd to have met the deadline to construct the facility in time for Cricket World Cup in 2007. Bush said this while making a slide presentation at the Commission of Enquiry into the Construction Sector at the Winsure Building, Richmond Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.
He said the contract for the multi-million project “is absolutely silent in terms of who is responsible for the co-ordination of this contract.” Bush added that there was “too much to-ing and fro-ing about the project. The second round of hearings is expected to end on Friday, commission chairman John Uff said yesterday. It continues this morning.