Less than half the budget for the $68 million Berkeley School project had been paid out by last month, eight months before the school is due to open, Works Minister Alex Scott had revealed.

And he confirmed in the House of Assembly on Friday that under-fire contractor Pro-Active will be getting extra management from the private sector to help to speed up the behind schedule project.

A report from the chief architect on January 13 showed $28,426,111 had been paid out on the job, he told the House of Assembly during the budget debate in the early hours of Saturday.

And to complete the job on time, Pro-Active would need to be spending an extra $4 million each month, doubling the rate of work, he said.

Confirming that new private sector management will help our Pro-Active, he said: "Pro-Active has been in the news and has received cash to allow them to address their credit deficiencies and it is my information that they will also take on additional management muscle going on.

"I think the management will be restructured in a way to support the increased volume of work and will probably assist them in many ways that will be beneficial to this project."

Turning to other school projects, Mr. Scott said Spice Valley Middle School - which was stalled when contractor BermudaTech went into liquidation - will be around $1.7 million over the $9.3 million budget. It was ironic that BermudaTech was the technical officers' recommendation to win the Berkeley project, he said.

If BermudaTech, which went under in a much smaller project at Spice Valley, had won the Berkeley job "we would be right where we are", he said.

"The Auditor (General Larry Dennis) has not written to me one line about that and I haven't received any searching questions from the media about that. And the Opposition has been deathly silent about that.

"What is the attraction of Pro-Active and what is the Teflon quality these other companies have that they don't get that type of political attention?

"Who am I to speculate about who gets that attention and who doesn't? Maybe it's as clear as black and white, but I can't see it."

Mr. Scott confirmed there was no receipt, as sought by Mr. Dennis, for the $700,000 that Pro-Active paid to establish the $6.8 million performance bond for Berkeley.

He said technical officers told him receipts for this type of work were never provided in the past when they were included in a bill of quantities (a document contractors provide to Government telling them how much a job will cost and which is agreed upon).

And he took a swipe at Mr. Dennis, with whom he has clashed in the media, saying his job was to audit policy, not set it.

Mr. Dennis has called in Police because Works and Engineering have not provided him with a receipt for the $700,000 which Pro-Active is supposed to have paid Union Asset Holdings for the performance bond.

"The Auditor General's office is important and the function is equally important. He must always be cooperatively assisted in every way possible, but he does not set policy, he audits policy, and when he breaks from policy it is our collective responsibility to comment," he told the House of Assembly.

"He asked for information and we gave him a response. It may not have been the response he wanted. We've never told him no.

"We've told (him) our Ministry does not have a receipt. It never has, because we don't go around giving receipts for $700,000."

The $700,000 was identified in the bill of quantities, he said.

He said Mr. Dennis wanted not only to see a receipt, but what was written on it, which he said had never happened before.

"If that had happened before I would have understood it, but he would be re-writing the way the construction industry operates," he said.

"His approach was with prejudice to the relationship between Pro-Active and Union Asset Holdings.

"He prejudged that that was to be treated differently from all other negotiated transactions that have ever gone on, that's why we could not give him a response."