The National Housing and Community Development Trust confirmed it received four bids to construct apartments for the redevelopment of the Affordable Housing Initiate site off Eastern Avenue.
The bidding process ended at 5pm on Wednesday. It had been extended past an original 1 April deadline after the Cayman Contractors Association protested that time allowed for the bidding process was not enough time to submit a proper design-and-build proposal.
NHCDT manager Roger Bodden said bids were received from Staunch Ltd., Royal Construction, KCoast Constructions/CI Precast and Myles Construction.
Staunch was the only company to submit a bid in the original three-week bidding period.
Mr. Bodden said the Trust wanted act quickly in getting construction under way.
‘We want to get started soon,’ he said. ‘We’re looking at about a seven-day period to determine which bidder gets the contract.’
The successful contractor would still have to get planning permission, although Mr. Bodden said a general application has already submitted to the Planning Department.
‘It was just an application for the redevelopment of the site,’ he said. ‘No contractor was involved with that.’
Project consultant Andrew Gibb said the outline planning application was submitted in order to speed up the process.
‘Our intent was to get the ball rolling,’ he said. ‘We know that there will be approximately 72 to 74 apartments and some of the other parameters. The minute a contract is awarded, the successful contractor will go in and flesh out the application by filling in the missing pieces.
Mr. Gibb said a one-week review period for the bids was sufficient.
‘It was a relatively simple set of design criteria they had to bid to,’ he said. ‘This isn’t rocket science; it’s affordable housing.
‘The intention of the bid process was to see what kind of expertise was out there and what kind of systems were there,’ he said, explaining that only building systems can realistically be used to construct low-cost housing.
The Cayman Contractors Association has questioned whether the bidding process would be a fair procedure. In a letter to the editor to the newspaper, it asked whether Staunch Ltd. had already been awarded a contract for the project.
Mr. Gibb said the awarding of the contract would be a fair process.
‘First we will see to what extent these four bidders conformed to our criteria,’ he said.
Mr. Gibb said he would do a technical appraisal on each of bidders’ systems and then report to the Housing Trust.
Cost is not the necessarily the most important factor of determining the successful bidder, Mr. Gibb said.
‘The cheaper system might only be cheapest because it offers only 600 square feet of living area,’ he said. ‘The Trust will have to weigh that consideration with other factors such as size and design.
‘This is not just a cost-per-square-foot exercise, although that is a very important aspect of consideration,’ he said.
Mr. Gibb said the bid review process began at 2pm yesterday.
‘We’re going to be very busy,’ he said.
Auditor General Dan Duguay confirmed someone from his office attended the bid closing on Wednesday.
He also said the Auditor General’s office would look at the bids at some point.
‘We do not intend to review the selection process per se, but a review of the bids would be part of a review that we intend to do in the future,’ he said.
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