A company building the new Berkeley School had indirectly asked to be taken off the project just weeks before they were fired, according to former Premier Alex Scott.

Mr. Scott was Works and Engineering Minister when Pro-Active Management Systems was chosen for the job. Originally priced at $68 million, the project eventually cost the taxpayer $125 million and came in three years late.

Pro-Active was sacked in August 2004 by then Works and Engineering Minister Ashfield DeVent when Mr. Scott was Premier. The company then sued for wrongful dismissal but lost.

Last week Government confirmed it had been awarded $13,212,438 in an arbitration hearing with the company and $2,408,385.70 in legal costs, but was still trying to get the money.

During an interview about ten years of Progressive Labour Party rule Mr. Scott told this paper he had been contacted in the summer of 2004 by Julian Hall, who was later taken on as Pro-Active's advisor, to say Pro-Active wanted out.

Mr. Scott told The Royal Gazette: "Since he has said so much publicly about it I don't think this was given in confidence – and he has broken confidences and gone public.

"I can remember the morning that Julian Hall called my house and said 'The fellas can't continue. They can't finish the job, but they would like to save face in being taken off the project'.

"I said 'that is very timely as we are obviously reviewing the status of this project at this moment'. It was for us to salvage the project."

Asked if Mr. Hall gave a reason for wanting to quit Mr. Scott declined to comment.

"I will never forget that telephone call. He used to call me rather regularly. He doesn't now and I am rather happy that he doesn't."

However Mr. Hall, who stressed he had no authority now to speak for Pro-Active, denied Mr. Scott's claim. He said: "That is certainly not my recollection and based upon what I do know it could hardly be considered true.

"I have no idea of why he would be saying something like that at this time."

Stressing he did not want to get into an internecine battle with PLP colleagues, Mr. Hall added: "I have no idea what he is talking about."

But Ashfield DeVent, who was the Minister who fired Pro-Active, said Mr. Scott had told him of the conversation at that time.

Mr. DeVent said: "They wanted out."

He added that Pro-Active had never indicated directly to him they wanted to quit but he had learned of their intention.

Asked if it was odd for Pro-Active to go on to seek compensation for unfair dismissal despite claims indicating they had had enough, Mr. DeVent said: "That is the type of people we were dealing with – both Pro-Active and Julian Hall.

He added: "One of the lowest points of my political career was to be called hapless by someone who has not really been constructive for the last ten or 15 years – Julian Hall."

The 'hapless' comment came in a piece by Mr. Hall in this paper in which he wrote: "... the short-lived and hapless former Minister of Works and Engineering Ashfield DeVent, who still doesn't understand that he may have been cynically used to make it seem that it was he who had been responsible for the Berkeley construction debacle".

Mr. DeVent denied being the fall guy.

"I became the new Minister, learning as I went along, but when the decision was made to fire Pro-Active I lost not one wink of sleep. I knew it had to be done.

"I grew up in a union family and was very much union and in that regard was supportive of what they had tried to do before I took over.

"However I realised that something had to be done to make a change."

He said he saw the lack of progress and encountered 'an attitude' from Pro-Active management.

"I think they had an attitude that because of our connection with the union and because of how they had gotten the job, I assume, that they couldn't be fired."

Mr. DeVent said he then came to realise Pro-Active should have been fired "long before because they were way beyond their depth".

Despite the enduring controversy surrounding the Berkeley job, Mr. Scott cited the school as his biggest success – even though it came in very late and way over budget.

Mr. Scott said the $125 million job was worth it, adding: "I am hugely proud of the end product."

Pro-Active had been flagged up as "high-risk" by Works and Engineering technical officers.

But Mr. Scott said; "We chose the successful contractors over Bermuda Tech who were the next in line, even though they were a lower bidder."

He said Bermuda Tech went into bankruptcy doing a $10 million job at Spice Valley while a third firm also put in a bid for the Berkeley project but came in with a price higher than Pro-Active and Bermuda Tech.

"The Pro-Active folks were right on the numbers that the quantity surveyors and technical officers had put together.

"The policy of the PLP Government was to open up and empower those Bermudians who had not had a shot at the economy.

"And so the Pro-Active individuals not only won on the merit of the bid but also had support in the first instance of a large contractor outside Bermuda – HR Lubben – they had all of the tools that suggested they could see the project through.

"But within a fortnight they said they had dropped the relationship with the large contracting and consulting firm.

"They had won the bid by saying that even the purchasing of materials would be conducted by this partner.

"So when the question of their ability to fund their way through the project came up before the fact they had all the answers that made us feel they could see it through.

"For the first year or two they did good work, maybe a little slower than we would have wished."

Mr. Scott said that consultants later observed that technical officers had underestimated the challenge of building on the hilly Berkeley site.

"It was not like (as the consultant said) 'building on a flat plain in Arizona'. No matter who undertook it, it was going to be a challenging project."

What matters is the school had been built said Mr. Scott.

"As a banker said to me – look at that edifice on the hill, that is going to be there to educate our children for the next 50 to 100 years and they will want for nothing when it comes to the physical plant.

"It is only if they have the will to take advantage of it. If you ask me my greatest success, it was the Berkeley project because it was a difficult one.

"And what was our greatest challenge? Some might say we made missteps because of cost overruns but I have explained that."