A Canadian firm has put in the lowest bid for a contract to work on the Olympic-size swimming pool at the National Sports Centre (NSC).

Bayside Mechanical, one of seven companies competing for the mechanical contract for the outdoor National Aquatic Centre, said it could do the work for $5.3 million.

Sean Tucker, chairman of the NSC's board of trustees, told The Royal Gazette on Friday that a decision had yet to be made on which firm would be awarded the job.

"The bids were just opened up today," he said. "It hasn't been awarded to anybody yet. Just because they have come up with the lowest bid doesn't mean they'll automatically get the project."

The next lowest bid after Bayside — at $6.3 million — came from local firm Island Engineering.

The other bids were: Black & Mac (Canada), $6.4 million; Bermuda Air Conditioning, $6.6 million; C-Tech (Bermuda), $7.4 million; GSC (Bermuda), $7.9 million; and Mega Systems (Cayman), $8.4 million.

Mr. Tucker said the budget for the swimming pool project was $15 million and it would involve about a dozen separate contracts. Bids for the electrical contract are due to be opened publicly at 2 p.m. on Wednesday at the NSC.

A source at one of the local firms bidding for the mechanical work, who would not be named, claimed it would be "morally wrong" to give a public contract to an offshore company when the sector was about to enter a major slowdown period.

"Government, or whichever authority is making the decision on this, is not bound to accept the lowest bidder.

"However, I firmly believe that, unless the expertise does not exist in Bermuda to carry out the work, only Bermudian companies should be allowed to bid on projects in Bermuda.

"We are talking here about a pool with a lot of fancy equipment, not a nuclear submarine."

Andy Pereira, president of the Construction Association of Bermuda (CAOB), said: "In previous talks with the NSC, we were assured Bermudians would be given the opportunity to work on this project.

"The CAOB feels there are local general contractors more than qualified to manage and build the new Aquatic Centre."

Mr. Tucker said Bayside Mechanical would "not necessarily" get the mechanical contract, despite having the lowest bid. "We put it out to tender and we obviously have to make sure that we use the taxpayers' money as best as we can and as prudently as possible.

"We have asked for bids to do the work and a decision will be made. We want to make sure that taxpayers' dollars are used as responsibly as possible. It's a totally transparent process; we don't have anything to hide."

He said the trustees had been advertising locally for workers to build the 50-metre, eight-lane pool at the NSC on Frog Lane in Devonshire.

"We have interviewed probably about 50 locals so far to come and work on this project for us," said Mr. Tucker. "That's the way we have done the last few projects at the NSC.

"That's how we did the grandstand. Ideally, we'd like to see as many locals employed as possible. We have always been on time and on budget and we have never had any issues."

Work was supposed to start last year on the Olympic-size pool, which was promised by Government in the 2008 Throne Speech.

It should be ready for the 2013 Island Games and will include a 36ft high diving platform with five boards and four springboards, a scoreboard and 60ft lighting.