SAPMT has reviewed the subject letter no. KPSS/SA/B/AKR/14/0679 dated June 26, 2014 and has the following comments:
1.	IC missed all the project milestones especially the mobilization(Precast works scheduled to commence on October 20, 2013 as per approved schedule, whereas the molds were received only at third week of March 2014 and the yard was ready for inspection at first week of April 2014) and that’s why the factory was not ready when it should have been.
2.	Idling means no work at all. The agreement from IC proves that there were other works to be done on the project at the time SAPMT requested to suspend a part of work and thus claims for idling are baseless. Workers and equipment’s should have been rescheduled to other activates promptly but as a matter of fact were rescheduled un-diligently. Despite various SAPAMT requests, other activates were not started, were slow, being done unprofessionally, damaging KAUST property and causing unnecessary delays. Various pictures were sent to IC to suggest hiring specialized skills. SAPMT agrees to compensate the contractor only for the significant resources which were acquired specifically for a single activity and could never be used anywhere else on the project.
3.	There are more than 20 buildings of various sizes in the project requiring 82340 man-hours according to the approved schedule. It roughly means 1000 man-hours for 82 days or 125 workers for 82 days. At the moment there is hardly any work being done on the buildings (Plan is 40.8% whereas Actual is 5.8%). The shop drawings are still not completed. None of the buildings have come out of the ground yet. The delayed shop drawings, the speed of work on buildings and culverts and quality of submittals depicts the inadequate site and resource planning being done by IC.
4.	Please refer to the daily tracking schedule for KAM road where the earthworks have been extremely behind schedule and have never been ahead of schedule since the start of the project, showing that not enough resources have ever been deployed by the contractor on any activity so far.
5.	IC failed to comply with paragraph 14.4 of Schedule-A where IC is required to submit daily time sheet to SAPMT for confirmation “no later than the following scheduled work dayâ€. None of the time sheets were submitted on the following scheduled work day and verified by SAPMT.
6.	This closes the discussion about claims for idling of manpower when a part of the project scope was suspended by SAPMT. If IC disagrees with SAPMT comments, IC may appeal to Saudi Aramco Contracting Department as provided for in Schedule-A Para 19. 
Should you have any questions, please contact Sohail Moughal, Project Engineer at Tel No. +966 2 422-4570.
