The Caribbean is fast developing into a key market for one of Barbados’ leading construction firms, which has already secured a number multimillion dollar contracts in the region and is in line to secure more.
Innotech Services Limited chief executive officer (CEO) Martin Da Silva told BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY that faced with a “tough” economy in Barbados and a now “substantially more competitive” building industry here, his company decided to look for opportunities in the Caribbean when the recession started to affect Barbados.
Next month Innotech will complete work on the $4.4 million Argyle Aircraft Rescue & Fire Fighting Building that is part of St Vincent and the Grenadines new international airport.
The company has already constructed a $13.3 million St Vincent and the Grenadines Community College, and the Georgetown Primary School, also located in the neighbouring island.
On top of that, Da Silva said, Innotech had been “invited to look at a large project in Belize” with the expectation that it would be working on it, and it was also “likely to commence another project in St Lucia within three to four weeks”.
The CEO said the Argyle fire station “would be complete within another four weeks, we are just about getting ready to finish it up and hand it over”.
“That building is about 12 000 square feet, it is a two-storey building and of course it accommodates training facilities and offices for the fire officers and service bays and so on for fire fighting equipment, so we expect to see that completed in a little while. We mobilised in St Vincent about three and a half years ago in January 2011,” he explained.
“When we saw the market starting to change we started to focus a lot more on diversifying away from Barbados and not necessarily depending only on Barbados. We do a large portion of our business outside of Barbados now and I think our team has continued to deliver a quality construction brand.”
