A revised completion deadline is at last to be announced for the new secondary school project with a promise that it will be finished in a matter of months, Works Minister Alex Scott has claimed.

He said he had been given a new date for the completion of the $70 million project and hoped to take it to Cabinet in the next week or so before releasing it to the public.

But the Minister said, contrary to claims in The Royal Gazette last week by senior construction experts on the site, the school development would be finished before September next year.

The insiders claimed the project, which was supposed to be open to students this September, would not be ready for at least another year as part of the roof was still not finished, walls were not erected and windows still had to be installed.

But yesterday, on his first day back at work after illness, Mr. Scott said those claims were “mischievous” and false. “We do have a new revised completion date, but I want to report to Cabinet and to the client (Education Ministry) first and then I will release it publicly, shortly,” said Mr. Scott.

“There have been suggestions that it's going to take a year beyond the original date. We are going to talk in terms of months, instead of a year.

“We are taking steps to be able to discuss with the general contractor ways in which there will be no slippage on the new date we have been given. Our concern is that there is no slippage.”

Mr. Scott said although he was not happy with the rate of work at the site, he was still satisfied with the quality of the work and said, financially, it had been run well.

And he said people forgot that 95 percent of people employed on the site were Bermudian.

He said claims by the United Bermuda Party that delays in building the school could push the price up to as much as $120 million were unfounded, and said, to date, the site was only $1 million over budget, which he believed was nothing for a development of this size. “This project is on budget. You cannot produce any sources, information or document that says the project, as it's currently going, is over budget,” said the Minister.

“Right now, the project is about $1 million over the projected $68 million that it was contracted for, and to all intents and purposes, for a project of this size, it's well under control. The suggestion that is being made that it's been mismanaged is totally false - it's been very tightly managed.”

This is the first time that the Minister has publicly said that the school, on Berkeley Road, Pembroke, would not be ready for some kind of occupation in September.

He had previously said he would not rule out some kind of September opening, but said he hoped that students could move on to the main site, while some, less important areas, were still being finished. Yesterday he said he had been unable to acknowledge that the site would not be finished on time due to legal issues.

And he said it was now clear that the Education Ministry did not wish to move in until the development was completed.

However, he said just because the deadline on the project was to be changed did not mean that general contractor Pro-Active Management Systems Ltd would automatically have to pay a penalty, even though there was a clause in the original contract stating so.

Asked about the penalty issue, he said: “I don't know, that's a layman's perception. I'm not in a position or prepared to say whether there will be a penalty for them going beyond the September original contract date. Until the whole project is concluded and the claims made have been adjusted, we probably don't know what may transpire as to the need for a penalty clause to be enacted.”

Mr. Scott said 27 months was always going to be a tight deadline, and if the project ran a matter of months late, at little extra cost or no inconvenience to the Education Ministry, then it may be agreed by both parties to put aside the penalty.

He added: “Penalty clauses require breaches of specific points. Going over time, if it's agreed between the client and the general contractor to change that date, then to my understanding, then it's not going to be something that warrants the enactment of a penalty.

“What concerns an owner is if it's going to hit him in the pocket.”

The site almost came to a standstill earlier this year when Pro-Active ran into serious financial difficulties, which resulted in many workers and sub-contractors failing to be paid and refusing to work.

There was talk of Pro-Active losing the site if it was unable to meet its debts, but a secret benefactor, thought to be the Bermuda Industrial Union, came to the rescue and paid off all of the bills.

Now sub-contractors on the site claim their payments are up to the date, but said the work rate, while improving a bit, was still too slow.

Yesterday a worker on the site said Pro-Active had paid off about 15 of its workers during the last month, but said that could be a good thing because the additional work could then be distributed among sub-contractors, who often did the work much faster and cheaper.

But yesterday, manager of Pro-Active Arthur Ebbin refused to be drawn on the claim that people had been laid off. He said: “We are a construction site and as all over, people come and go.”