CCMC finish line held hostage to old, unfixed defects – contractor
CEBU CITY, Philippines — Finishing the Cebu City Medical Center’s final phase now depends on repairs its own contractor did not cause and cannot unilaterally fix.
The corrective work will cost the city money, the firm said Tuesday, but nobody in the room could yet put a number on it.
Dakay Construction and Development Corp., which took over Phase 5 after the city terminated a previous contractor, told councilors during a Sept. 29 executive session that its contract binds it only to Phase 5’s own scope of work.
But a hospital, principal engineer Ricky Dakay argued, would not function in isolated pieces.
“The whole is always equal to the sum of the parts,” Dakay said. “If the sum of the other parts are wanting, then you’ll never have a whole. That’s a mathematical axiom.”
READ: ‘Substandard’ CCMC works delay completion, Archival confirms
Pressed by Councilor Harry Eran on whether Phase 5 could proceed without first correcting the older defects, Dakay confirmed his firm’s output was contingent on that separate, unresolved fix.
“Yes, sir, because you see, all of these systems are interconnected,” Dakay said. “Buildings are like human beings, you know. The action of our hand is dependent on our brain.”
Eran summarized the exchange for the record.
“Klaro nga contingent ang ilang performance sa mga nakit-an nga mga deficiency sa previously awarded contract,” he said.
(It’s clear that their performance is contingent on the deficiencies found in the previously awarded contract.)
READ: Cebu City hospital: COA flags ₱1.13B spent on delayed CCMC project
No number yet
Asked directly by Councilor Mikel Rama whether the city faces a decision on incurring “substantial additional cost” to complete Phase 5, Dakay did not dispute it. He simply said he could not size it.
“I am sure that there will be additional cost that will be incurred to rectify all the defects and the substandard works,” Dakay said.
“But as to the magnitude, I cannot speak for that, because our contract is strictly limited to Phase 5.”
He also told the council his company holds no records from the project’s first four phases.
“We were not privy to that, nor do we have any institutional memory,” he said.
The defects came from a separate audit by volunteer engineers from the Institute of Integrated Electrical Engineers (IIEE), presented earlier in the same session.
Engineer Brian Pasilan, the team’s electrical consultant, informed the council that based on an assessment conducted last November, the hospital’s power and fire-safety systems remained partially wired and uncommissioned.
Among the findings were the absence of a functioning grounding system, untested switchgear, and plastic PVC conduit in operating rooms and the ICU, where standards require metallic tubing.
Pasilan added, though, that hospital operations staff have since made in-house corrections, and some flagged hazards “have already been addressed as far as patient safety is concerned.”
Money already spent
The city has already spent P1.13 billion on CCMC, per COA’s 2025 Annual Audit Report, which also flagged missing technical documents and unexplained contract extensions.
Dakay’s own Phase 5 contract, worth close to P700 million, replaced an earlier P900-million award the city terminated after that contractor completed only 4.1 percent of the scoped work.
Dakay was unable to quantify the cost of additional corrective work, while instructions from the Department of Health and COA prevent the city from removing any flagged component without prior documentation.
Facing these hurdles, the council closed the session by asking COA directly for guidance. Councilor Mikel Rama moved, and the body approved, a formal request for COA “to issue explicit guidance detailing the specific requirements and procedural steps the city government must fulfill to legally resume construction of Phase 5.
Mayor Nestor Archival said last week the city still targets December 2026 to complete the building, with medical equipment installation to follow in early 2027.
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