'Huge mistakes' says firm's boss
The claims support allegations made in February 2006 by site inspector Gabriel Martel, who catalogued hundreds of alleged safety violations during a two-week inspection of the new school and declared it a “death trap”.
Government later demanded that Mr. Martel be fired after the whistleblower repeatedly raised concerns about the work of one particular contractor.
His concerns, although supported by co-workers, were dismissed as those of “a disgruntled ex-employee” by the site’s management firm, Somers Construction, while then-Works & Engineering Minister David Burch said Mr. Martel would be “exposed for the liar that he is”.
In his letter to Dr. Binns, Mr. Cherry wrote: “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.
“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.”
