A BUILDING supplies company which was involved in the construction of the Berkeley public school has backed up previous allegations of poor workmanship and corruption at the site.Conspec Ltd. claims it is still owed thousands of dollars for supplies it provided for the project - and has threatened Government to go public with its insider knowledge of "huge mistakes, poor workmanship and suspect deliveries and disbursements" at the site unless Government helps to get those bills paid.

The claims back up allegations made last February by site inspector Gabriel Martel, who catalogued hundreds of safety violations during a two-week inspection of the building and declared it a "death trap".

Government later demanded that he be fired after the whistleblower repeatedly raised concerns about the work of one particular contractor.

The mammoth construction project was plagued by controversy after it was put out to tender by Government in November 2000.

Pro-Active Management Services - identified as a high-risk bidder - eventually won the contract and promised to complete the school by September 2003 at a cost of around $70 million.

But in August 2004, after repeated delays and a spiralling budget, the company was sacked from the job and the Ministry of Works & Engineering took control of the project. The school was eventually completed last September at a cost of around $125 million - three years late and more than $50 million over budget.

A legal battle between Government and Pro-Active Management Services, which claims its contract was wrongfully terminated, is understood to be ongoing. Government has decreed that the proceedings be held behind closed doors.

Conspec is one of a number of companies which claim they are still owed money by Pro-Active - and have been repeatedly told by the firm that it cannot make any payments until its legal battle with Government is resolved. Another company, SKB Coatings, is now taking legal action against Pro-Active, claiming the firm still owes them $60,000.

In a letter sent to Works & Engineering Permanent Secretary Derek Binns last week, Conspec owner Dennis Cherry wrote: "We are writing to you again with regards to long overdue payments that are outstanding from the new Berkeley Senior School.

"Conspec, as you are well aware, has been cooperative the whole way through this contract and we are being treated very badly here.

"The nominated contractor, Pro Active Management, never paid us on time and in full. The payments were very often not even accompanied with a payment advice slip.

"They were inept and incompetent with just about every aspect of this project that we had to deal with.

We had to guess when to deliver the products on site, which included having to anticipate the ordering process. We had to move the finished hardware on three occasions, at no extra cost to anyone except us. A great deal of this hardware had to be replaced due to mismanagement. We delivered steel doors and frames to site that were left out in the weather, were damaged due to neglect or were just lost.

"Conspec, in spite of not being paid continued to supply products to this project 'for the good of the project'. Any other contractor would have, and we believe, did withdraw their services until paid in full. We did not. We were assured that we would be looked after in the end and agreed to complete the supply for this project.

"When it was made very public that Pro Active management was in great financial troubles, this is when the Bermuda Industrial Union took over the running of the project, implanting their own managers within Pro Active's. We were not happy about this as our purchase orders were with Pro Active, not the union.

"We had been in contact with Derek [sic] Burgess and other members of their organisation with regards to payments. We were assured we would be paid.

"As you can see, we have $34,688.42 owed directly from non-payments from Pro Active. These claims were made before their termination and the amount is mounting due to interest charges.

"For your information, Conspec has never made public any of these details of non-payment or huge mistakes made on site, along with a huge amount of poor workmanship and suspect deliveries and disbursements observed while we were on the Berkeley site. We have been approached for comments but felt at the time that this was inappropriate. We feel that perhaps this is the course of action that we must take in order to get paid and rectify the incorrect records."

Works & Engineering Permanent Secretary Derek Binns is currently off the island and could not be reached for comment yesterday.