ARTICLE - ECOLE LAKAY TRADE SCHOOL

TRADE SCHOOL REBUILDING PROJECT IN HAITI RUNS INTO REALITY
(Journal of Commerce) - By Vince Versace

Blue tarped roofs dot the Haitian landscape as dusty, rubble lined streets offer roadside stands selling anything from plastic bags to a shoeshine.

An estimated two million Haitians are still homeless in the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake that rocked the island nation to its very foundation.

Locals have been left scratching out a living in a devastated landscape, over a million of them still living in tents.

A recent mid-May trip to Haiti by the Canadian Construction Association's project team tasked with rebuilding trade school Ecole Lakay there helped put into further focus the construction picture they face.

“It is really a travesty to see what people live in and walk through on a daily basis,” said Paul Charette, CCA’s advisor of construction for the Ecole Lakay rebuild. Charette was part of the seven-member team in Haiti to review technical build issues and standards for the school and to begin firming up the logistics for the construction project.

Among the team members were representatives from L’Association de la construction du Quebec (ACQ) and the British Columbia Construction Association (BCCA).

Charette provided a report of the team’s five-day visit to CCA’s board of directors, during its recent spring meeting in Vancouver.

The CCA, ACQ and BCCA teamed up in late 2010 to rebuild Ecole Lakay in Le Soleil, Haiti.

The construction associations partnered with Builders Without Borders and The Rinaldi Foundation to rebuild the school, which suffered severe damage in the magnitude 7.0 earthquake last year.

“We want to ensure that we can build a building that could withstand another significant earthquake and will be able to train young students at the school,” said Charette.

“We want to make sure proper spending of our fund and mitigate any exposure to corruption — that could be a significant challenge from what I can see. Another challenge is ensuring we get a competent contractor to build this facility.”

Charette presented a four-minute video to the board to better illustrate, not only what the construction landscape is for the project, but also the conditions the mass of Haitians face every day.

Ecole Lakay offered carpentry, cabinetry and electrical installation instruction before it was devastated by the earthquake.

Besides having an opportunity to learn a trade, students received a hot meal three times a day, clean clothes and a safe place to sleep.

A sombre visual during the video showed the school’s cemetery, where 22 of the 150 people that died on the site in the earthquake are now buried.

The CCA raised $634,000 to rebuild the school, with $50,000 of that earmarked for equipment.

The scope of the project has changed recently from the original rebuilding of the school, resulting in a one-storey, 11,000 square-foot-building, to a proposed two-storey, 23,000 sq. ft. structure.

The project scope has bounced back and forth and the project site itself has been relocated.

Finalization on the project specifications is currently underway. Whether it will be a one or two-storey building remains to be seen.

“The missionary group had advised us they did not want a two-storey building because the children were absolutely petrified of going into a building and worrying about that slab (above) falling on their head,” said Charette.

The ultimate redesign of the school is the responsibility of CCA’s Haiti-based partners, but the association has strongly recommended that there has to be a minimum level of seismic standard incorporated into the design.

“It is really chaotic down there,” Charette explained.

“There is no building code. Specifications are unheard of.”

The project team visited three different construction sites during their stay to better understand Haitian construction and building material quality, including finding a competent contractor.

The most professionally run site they visited belonged to the non-profit group Helping Hands for Haiti.

Charette said that the site was well-organized with quality building materials, good foundations and similar building techniques to those used in Canada.

The project team also visited the site of a recommended local contractor that Charette said was a “disaster”, with poor-quality materials used, such as rusted steel and honeycombed concrete.

Charette informed the CCA’s local partners that the project has to be tendered and this contractor cannot be among the bidders. They agreed.

The cost of construction at the Helping Hands site was roughly $600 a square metre and Charette figured the CCA project will cost between $400 and $500 a square metre to build an 11,000-sq. ft. building.

At 23,000 sq. ft., it will require double the funding already raised.

“We have to do all the right things in the oncoming months,” he said.

“We will not sacrifice quality of construction and what can be afforded for the sake of schedule. We are better off to make sure we have everything in place before we put a shovel in the ground.”