The National Works Agency has completed the pre-qualification stage of the international competitive bidding for the Shared Prosperity through Accelerated Improvement to our Road Network (SPARK) Programme.
Eight construction companies responded to the request for pre-qualification, two of which are local.
“We expect those bid proposals to be returned by mid-August, and then we will seek approval from the Public Procurement Commission, as well as Cabinet, to award contracts by the end of September,” said Minister without Portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation with responsibility for Works, Robert Morgan.
He was addressing Wednesday’s (June 12) post-Cabinet press briefing at Jamaica House.
The construction contracts are scheduled for two years, with an additional year for defects liability.
Morgan also said that SPARK has been approved for inclusion in the Public Sector Investment Programme (PSIP), and the concept has been approved by the Public Investment Management Committee (PIMC).
Chief Executive Officer of the National Works Agency (NWA), E G Hunter, underscored that SPARK is an ambitious and aggressive programme.
“It is not a patching programme, it is not a pothole repair programme. It is a rehabilitation programme that seeks to improve the quality of a certain number of roads, and what that means is that the cost for this undertaking is going to be very different from what we normally do,” Hunter said.
He explained that the capacity of the country to spend $40 billion over two years, simultaneously across constituencies, is demanding, but the NWA has done a good job of conceptualising a workable programme.
