Clock ticking on ADOMS Building completion

Parties involved in the construction of the ADOMS Building have been dragged before the Cabinet for an accounting, some three years after the projected completion date and almost a third of the cost over budget.
The facility on Factory Road was to be completed 18 months after the groundbreaking in 2013 at a cost of $25 million. That figure is now pegged at nearly $33 million, according to Minister of Information Melford Nicholas.
Speaking at Thursday’s post-Cabinet media briefing, he revealed that the Project Manager and the Chief Financial Officer were summoned before the Cabinet to share the reasons for the delay and cost overruns.
A government statement highlighted challenges related to water runoff during rains, and the thickness of the concrete that paved the parking apron, as the reasons for the delays and cost increase.
“This is a matter that is of grave concern to government. This would have been the third successive occasion that there has been a material delay in the completion of the project,” Nicholas said.
He added that  the matter has now achieved a greater degree of urgency.
“We are staged to host an important diplomatic event, the staging of the Cuba-CARICOM Summit is slated to take place here in Antigua and the completion of that building was necessary to facilitate some of the state functions that would be required.”
The minister said that the government was unhappy with the situation, but he was reluctant to reveal the names of the contractors. According to him, full public disclosure would be made after they had addressed all of the “complexities involved.”
However, he was quick to point out that the project was one that the Browne administration inherited.
“The contractors were persons who had full contracts when we came into office so … The project as originally conceptualised was allowed to run its course.”
(More in today’s Daily Observer.)