Procurement Director at the National Education Trust (NET), Suewayne Miller Bender, says the agency is partnering with qualified contractors to build back more resilient schools following the devastation of Hurricane Melissa.
More than 700 schools across the island sustained damage during the passage of the category-five hurricane last October.
Speaking at a recent public procurement engagement session, Mrs. Miller Bender pointed out that the Trust, which functions as both a registered charity and the primary infrastructure arm for the Ministry of Education, Skills, Youth, and Information, is now shifting gears from emergency response to long-term, resilient reconstruction.
She noted that a key component of this resilience strategy is the transition from traditional roofing to slab roofs and other reinforced structures.
“We’re looking to partner with our contractors to ensure that our schools are built better so we can actually give the children of Jamaica what they deserve,” Mrs. Miller Bender said, inviting grades one and two contractors to reach out to the entity.
“The main requirement for the Melissa recovery is that the [contracting entity] needs a structural engineer on their team to conduct the [structural assessment] exercise, because we are not just building back the schools, we’re building stronger, better resilient schools that can withstand these hurricanes if they should come again,” she pointed out.
Mrs. Miller Bender said that several contractors have already come forward but noted that challenges in the tender process have caused some project delays.
These include contractors having incomplete bid submissions and failing to submit Tax Compliance Certificate (TCC), provide details about the composition of their teams, present Professional Engineers Registration Board (PERB) qualifications, among other things.
Mrs. Miller Bender said that NET also requires proof of the financial capability of the contracting firms, highlighting experiences “where contractors are not able to mobilise and start a project after the procuring entity would have awarded that contracting firm”.
She informed that the NET has placed a checklist at the front of its tender document to help contractors better prepare their submissions.
“So, [contractors] would have seen what the requirements are, what they need to submit to participate in the tender process to ensure that we do not have any holdup when we’re conducting our evaluation, going back out for clarification… because that is a further delay in our procurement process,” Mrs. Miller Bender stated.
