UTC engineer to check out HQ

When the government campus and Customs and Excise buildings are complete, their neighbour the Unit Trust Corporation (UTC) plans to call in an engineer to make sure its own structure remained safe.

UTC chief executive officer Michael Alexander said before the multi-million dollar projects on Richmond Street and Wrightson Road, Port-of-Spain began a structural engineer was brought in to check the sturdiness of the UTC headquarters, which is on Independence Square.

He said staff had concerns when the government campus construction began on Richmond Street (behind the UTC) as the pile-driving, in the initial phase, shook the upper floors of the ten-storey UTC building. The staff was relocated.

“We had to take into consideration people’s health because when the piles were being driven into the ground, the top floors shook uncomfortably, causing anxiety among staff. But now we could breathe a sigh of relief since the pile-driving stopped,” Alexander said yesterday. Alexander said he could not comment on Wednesday’s accident at the Customs and Excise construction site, which is some distance away on Wrightson Road, when a scaffolding collapsed injuring at least 20 workers.

However, as a precaution to ensure that the UTC building had not been structurally weakened during the campus construction an engineer would be brought back to examine it. He said it was not necessary to have an engineer examine the building at present.

On a positive note, Alexander said the campus would be welcomed, especially the multi-storey car park.