PLYMOUTH, Montserrat – The Montserrat Port Development Project has advanced to the procurement process phase, as contractors are now invited to pre-qualify for the design-build contract for the Phase 1 Development.
Project Manager of the Montserrat Port Development Project, Dion Weekes said the Project has satisfied the conditions set by the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) to advance to a procurement phase and as a result contractors are now invited to pre-qualify for the design and construction of the port facilities.
Contractors interested in pre-qualifying should visit the Government of Montserrat tenders website at https://tenders.gov.ms/?page_id=9&id=209 and the Caribbean Development Bank website https://www.caribank.org/work-with-us/procurement/procurement-notices/montserrat-port-development-project-1.
The invitation to prequalify is also published on the United Nations Business Development website.
The deadline date for pre-qualification submissions to be received is March 3, 2020, following which the bidding documents for the design and construction of the port facilities are expected to be issued by the end of March.
Weekes noted that some aspects of the preliminary designs for the Port have already been developed, and once selected the design-build contractor will be expected to complete the design.
“We have onboard the Engineering Consultant, Stantec Consulting International Limited with head office in Canada and a regional office in Barbados. They are a multi-disciplinary engineering firm with over 20 thousand employees and they are responsible for advising the government and coming up with the preliminary design, up to 30 percent. They are also responsible for preparing the bidding documents for a competitive bidding process which will result in the selection of design and build contractor, who will then be contracted to complete the remaining 70 percent of the design, then construct the facility,” explained the project manager.
The project manager is aiming to have the contract with the design-build contractor signed by the end of July 2020, followed by the start of actual construction before the end of this year. If this timeline is maintained, then the port development project is expected to be completed by the third quarter of 2022.
The port development project is funded in the amount of £ 21.4 million pounds. The allocated funding will finance the first phase of the Little Bay port development. “The nature of port development throughout the region and generally is that it is a continuous development carried out over years, in phases. What we intend to achieve in the first phase is to improve the downtime (caused by rough seas), allow for larger ships, such as cruise ships to berth in the new jetty and also provide some level of protection to the existing jetty,” stated Weekes.
The project has been made possible through grant funding of £14.4 million from the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) under the United Kingdom Caribbean Infrastructure Fund (UKCIF). The Fund is administered and managed by the Caribbean Development CDB, who has general oversight over the project. The Government of Montserrat is providing £7 million in counterpart resources with financial support from the European Development Fund 11 (EDF11) programme.
The project is being implemented by the ministry of communications works energy and labour with support from the ministry of finance and economic management and the programme management office.
