Contractor rails at payment wrangle

 

Lakis Construction, the company that won the $5.3 million contract for platform extensions on six northern suburbs railway stations, is fighting off a claim of nearly $196,000 from subcontractor Bell Corporation.

The claim relates to work Bell did for Lakis on the northern suburbs railway stations and the new Bassendean railway station. Bell claims it has not been paid for the work.

Bell Corporation director Colin Bell said the company had been paid for some of the work it had done but the final, much larger payment was to be made when the final job, Stirling Train Station, was completed.

“He [Antoine Lakis] paid us less than he should have paid. All of the money was kept to the last station and he said the money would be paid when the last station was completed,” Mr Bell said.

“Then, Lakis took the contract off us before that station was completed.”

Lakis director Antoine Lakis said he could not comment on Mr Bell’s claims because the matter was before the courts.

Mr Bell said his company had been subcontracted by Lakis to perform steel engineering work for the platform extensions, for six railway stations on the northern suburbs rail line and the Bassendean train station refurbishment.

The company did all of the steel platform extensions for those northern suburbs stations.

However, the northern suburbs jobs ran five weeks behind schedule.

Mr Bell blamed that on Mr Lakis, saying the company only supplied engineering drawings after the job was actually supposed to be finished.

“It took us three weeks to fabricate the parts we needed,” he said.

“We were five weeks behind and he blamed us for the five-week delay.”

Mr Bell also said that a train had hit a platform in a minor accident at Bassendean because the station was out of alignment.

“We then had to realign the station,” he said.

Mr Bell said his company had also done a lot of work outside of the rail contract to try and help the jobs run smoothly. Despite the legal wrangling, Lakis has won the $1.7 million contract to build the new Murdoch Fire Station.