The Government has revealed more details about how it came to hire two firms for housing projects in response to questions from the One Bermuda Alliance.

However, Michael Fahy, the Shadow Minister of Economy, Labour and Housing, said the answers raised even more questions and failed to fully address concerns about the procurement process.

Mr Fahy said: “The questions are, did the process lead to the best value for money and was the process actually fair?

“In addition, if a Ministry of Finance evaluation memo was followed, why not also follow a transparent procurement methodology?

“We remain concerned that in the interest of speed, the usual and expected standards are not being followed.”

It was announced this year that Coastal Precast Systems, of Virginia, United States, and Preconco Ltd, of Barbados, won no-bid contracts for affordable housing projects as the Government sought to bolster housing in Bermuda.

While Zane DeSilva, the Minister of Housing and Municipalities, said that speed was of the essence to address housing challenges faced by residents, Mr Fahy said that greater transparency was required given the amount of public money to be spent.

In written responses to questions put forward by Mr Fahy, Jeane Nikolai, the Permanent Secretary of Housing and Municipalities, said the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee was tasked with identifying housing solutions.

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Answers to Ministerial Questions on Housing Contracts.pdf

Among the targets set were that the homes would need to be delivered within two years at a baseline price of under $500 per square foot while maximising participation by local subcontractors and tradespeople.

“Before considering individual suppliers, the AHAC assessed the feasibility of traditional domestic construction methods.

“The evaluation concluded that traditional masonry construction could not satisfy both the budget and delivery requirements of the programme and therefore alternative construction methodologies were considered.”

Ms Nikolai said that nine international firms were initially evaluated, including Coastal, Z-Modular, Stack Modular, Preconco, Bauhu, RAD, MICEM, Forsa and Cosmos.

As part of the evaluation process, a ‘gating’ method was used, removing vendors if they failed to meet baseline requirements, while considering factors such as housing typology, life expectancy and delivery timelines. Other considerations include compliance with the building code, hurricane resistance, supplier capability, relevant experience and local knowledge.

“By February 2026, the field had been narrowed to Coastal, Preconco, Z-Modular and Stack.

“The evaluation further notes that Cosmos and Forsa failed the building code and hurricane resistance requirements. Certain modular solutions were assessed as having shorter anticipated life spans and higher maintenance exposure.

“Several shortlisted modular vendors could not guarantee delivery timelines compatible with the project schedule and modular systems generally provided less local participation than precast solutions because greater portions of the work are completed off-site prior to delivery.”

Ms Nikolai added that in the category of relevant experience and local knowledge, Coastal and Preconco scored significantly higher than Stack and Z Modular.

“Following the shortlisting of Coastal and Preconco, representatives of AHAC undertook the site visits to the suppliers’ manufacturing facilities in Virginia and Barbados as part of the supplier capability verification process.

“The purpose of those visits was to assess technical capacity, scalability, quality-control systems and operational readiness.

“The delegation reviewed quality management procedures, safety protocols, casting operations, material testing procedures, logistics, handling processes and shipment readiness.”

The responses also stated that $16,588 of travel expenses were incurred by Andrew Dias, the chief executive of the Bermuda Land Management Corporation, along with Mark Melo, Keino Furbert-Jacobs and Lakila Bell for the Bermuda Housing Corporation as part of site visits.

Ms Nikolai said that Coastal and Preconco passed every sequential gate, and the committee only began to evaluate costs, fit-out requirements and local subcontractor participants after all the minimum threshold requirements had been satisfied.

While Stack Modular submitted the lowest-priced proposal, with their pitch costing $210 per square foot, the quoted price did not include “significant additional costs” including staging, instillation and other site-related works.

The expected life span of the product was also not considered sufficient to justify the level of investment.

The price estimate for Preconco was listed at $248 per square foot, while the Coastal proposal was estimated to be $416 per square foot.

After receiving the responses, Mr Fahy said: “As one would expect, there are more questions that arise from these and, in particular, that relates to the gating process which appears to favour immediately one vendor over another.

“Given this, of course, only two vendors of the nine listed vendors considered would obtain scores that allow them to proceed to be seriously considered and shortlisted.”

Mr Fahy added: “The answers also do not list who the minister met with and yet the minister himself has said numerous times he met with certain manufacturers.

“Again, this makes little sense.”

The Government did not respond to a request for comment for this story by press time.