Mater Dei Hospital’s original architect, Richard England, has washed his hands of the crisis involving weak concrete structures, saying he had been “kicked out” before the building phase started.
Contacted yesterday, Prof. England said he was not the hospital’s architect when construction work started and, therefore, “had nothing to do” with the weak concrete structures found at the hospital’s accident and emergency department.
“When we were still involved, that building was not part of the scheme. When we were involved, the hospital had 400 beds. Then we were kicked out and the size doubled, so I know nothing about it,” he said.
The contract for the building of the hospital was awarded to a consortium, which included Swedish construction giant Skanska, together with Maltese developers Blokrete and Devlands.
Several attempts to contact directors of the two Maltese companies yesterday proved futile.
A spokesman for Skanska declined to comment, saying only that the company had not been contacted and therefore it had “no information to comment on”.
The spokesman would not even be drawn into saying whether the news of the fiasco came as a surprise.
An inquiry board, chaired by Judge Philip Sciberras, was expected to have its first meeting yesterday. The board was set up after tests indicated that parts of the concrete structure at the emergency department were weaker than ordinary pavements.
Tests are being carried out to assess the strength of the rest of the hospital, which had cost taxpayers €600 million and took almost 15 years to complete.
The weakness of the structure at the emergency department surfaced when companies that won a tender to build the new wards, Mekkanika and Attard Bros, carried out a stress test to ensure the building could take the extra floors.
The plan had been to build two new wards on top of the emergency department and, had the concrete met the stipulated grade of C30, it would have been possible to proceed with the project if reinforced accordingly.
Basically, the strength of a concrete mix – that includes cement, sand and gravel – is measured in grades: C30 is very strong as it contains less gravel while C15 is used for general purposes, such as pavements.
The core stress tests taken exposed a huge disparity, ranging from C30 to close to C10 (cement normally used in trenches).
A substantial number of columns supporting the emergency department may need to be replaced or reinforced.
Former prime minister Alfred Sant, under whose watch the hospital project had started, had alleged that Mixer Ltd was supplying concrete using trucks belonging to Blokrete and Devlands. He had later shown the media a video recording of a Devlands truck getting concrete from the firm before heading towards the Tal-Qroqq hospital.
Bastjan Dalli, the brother of former finance minister John Dalli and one of the directors of Mixer Ltd, was reported denying he had ever supplied any concrete for the emergency department. Repeated attempts to contact him again yesterday were unsuccessful.
In 2002, Mixer Ltd had a €2.5 million contract cancelled by the Housing Department. The contract for the project that included 22 public housing apartments in Floriana had been rescinded after a team of government experts found that the concrete used for the ceilings was below standard and “unsafe”.
Asked for his opinion as an experienced architect on the structural problems at Mater Dei as a result of the quality of the concrete used, Prof. England said commenting on the matter was “not on”.
“I don’t want to make any comments because I do not know the case and I don’t know what’s happening. From what I’ve read, it seems the building [emergency department] was not designed to take more than one floor but I’d rather not comment,” he said.