Fears that new Basseterre High School could cost double

The cost of building the new Basseterre High School could be double the estimated EC$40 million figure that the government has provided, a leading architect has warned.

And he added that an environmental impact assessment cannot be completed until the design concept is finished.

Victor Williams was speaking in an exclusive interview with WINN FM.

He is a former chairman of the Development Control and Planning Board.

According to the expert, the $40 million budget doesn’t include the cost of support buildings, fencing, furniture, lab equipment and air conditioning.

“Being very familiar with cost and having actually designed some larger buildings I am estimating the special requirement for building is in excess of 70,000sq ft,” he said.

“The accompanying global costing - I’m taking into consideration the government doesn’t pay duty on its materials – and so far I’ve wrapped up between 55 and 60 million EC dollars.

[caption id="attachment_4225" align="alignright" width="293"] Victor Williams.[/caption]

“However, let me hasten to add, because I haven’t seen the design there are a number of global costs that are not yet included. For example support buildings, sporting and recreation, site improvement which would be things like parking, landscaping, fencing of the structure, furniture, lab equipment, air conditioning.

“So we don’t know these yet, so the point I’m making is that realistically, from what I’ve seen over the years that could be quite a few additional million dollars. I don’t think I mentioned the sewage disposal system, because that’s going to be another big system as well.

“So realistically, and it’s important for us to know this and not be naive in thinking of cost we’re looking at another 15 to 20 million dollars on top of the $60 million so we’re looking at anywhere between 75 to 80 million dollars.”

WIC News has reached out to the government for their response.

Water issue

The decision to build the new school on the town’s water table, which provides millions of gallons of water to residents of Basseterre, Frigate Bay and the Southeast peninsula, as been a source of contention between the opposition St Kitts-Nevis Labour Party and the government for a number of months.

At the start of June, Timothy Harris’ administration was labelled “uncaring” by Marcella Liburd, MP for Central Basseterre.

But the government hit back, claiming their decision was guided by experts at all times.

“We will ensure that in the design and construction that adequate redundancies are put in place to deal with any possibility of any spill of any kind of waste whatsoever,” said Cromwell Williams, director of public works, adding that plans had been made to avoid any issues.

And Deputy Prime Minister said the cabinet “at no point in time” depended on their own advice.

[caption id="attachment_2473" align="aligncenter" width="475"] Deputy Prime Minister Shawn Richards.[/caption]

‘Critical’ environment study

Architect and planner Williams said during his radio interview that an environmental impact assessment is a critical step – but one that can only be done once the design concept for the school is complete.

“The design concept and the narrative is critical because the narrative will speak to all the systems that you propose to put in there, because you have to inform the persons who are going to do the next step, which is the environmental impact assessment,” he said.

“Now they can’t do that assessment until they know what are the design parameters, but certainly by now we should have in place the design parameters and the narrative to go with it.”

Despite the project being governmental, Williams stressed that the usual planning requirements must be followed.

“This EIA stage is a very, very critical because you will never be able to make any conclusive statement until you’ve done the EIA and although I’ve heard some engineers make certain statements. It cannot be conclusive until the EIA is done and you cannot pre-determine the EIA, you can’t fix the results of the EIA; it has to evolve out of the prevailing circumstances,” he added.

WIC News understands that representatives from the contracting and civil engineering companies met with the steering committee for the BHS construction last week in an effort to finalise the design concepts.