A consultant engineer who provided services related to the Sandals Whitehouse project gave further cause for concern Tuesday regarding alleged air conditioning overcapacity at the hotel.

Consultant Engineer Basil Nelson told Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) member John Junor that the air conditioning system was designed "with a 50 per cent additional capacity, with the chillers". Pressed on the matter by Mr. Junor, the engineer said that it was not normal to have so much overcapacity, "unless you plan future expansions".

The response elicited feigned expressions of surprised enlightenment from government member K.D. Knight, who, at a previous sitting, had raised the issue of overcapacity.

Other hotel plan

When executives of Sandals Resorts International and its subsidiary, Gorstew Limited, met with the PAC two weeks ago, Mr. Knight asked whether there was too much excess capacity (or redundancy) at the Whitehouse hotel and whether this was intended to facilitate the construction of another hotel by the chain, on adjoining lands.

This was dismissed then by Sandals Chairman, Gordon 'Butch' Stewart, who told Mr. Knight: "You could not be further from the truth!"

But the issue was given new life Tuesday by Mr. Nelson in his response to the members' questions. The 'energy room' he said, which included the various utility services, such as the air-conditioning chillers and electricity generators, was situated a considerable distance away from the central location (including kitchens and freezers) that would be mostly served by this facility. This "very remote" location (estimated to be a distance of 500-600 ft) had implications for increased costs, he said, since there would have to be a greater outlay of distribution lines to take the services to the locations that needed them.

In a separate interview with The Gleaner, Mr. Nelson declined to go along with the view that the presumed overcapacity was intended to facilitate the construction of another hotel. He said, however, that it could easily support another 300-400 rooms.

Figures presented to the PAC by quantity surveyor Brian Goldson revealed that the cost of air conditioning moved from a projected $1,732,139 to a final cost of $4,433,830.

Mr. Nelson told the PAC that he had been told that the changes in specifications had been air conditioning system had been requested by Sandals Resorts International.

But, in response to PAC member Audley Shaw, he agreed that these changes would ultimately have had to receive the approval of the project manager, Nevalco.