OEC breaks ground for state-of-the-art, multipurpose facility
Published:Thursday | September 19, 2024 | 12:08 AMAsha Wilks/Gleaner Writer
The development of a state-of-the-art, multipurpose facility by the Overseas Examinations Commission (OEC), scheduled for completion by 2026, is expected to bring about significant enhancements to the administration of examinations in Jamaica and the Caribbean region.
Speaking with The Gleaner following a groundbreaking ceremony for the facility yesterday, Brian Bennett-Easy, chairman of the OEC board, stated that the facility would cost nearly $2 billion, with the likelihood of an additional spend of approximately $600 million for digital infrastructure.
The first phase of the construction works, which will begin in October, is the demolition of the existing building that has stood for many years and has experienced internal damage to its structure, including an infestation of termites, he said.
The four-storey building will include several multipurpose rooms that will be able to function as examination rooms and laboratories, a full suite of offices, and extensive staff facilities, Raymond McIntyre, principal of Apec Consultants Limited, chief architect and project manager, told The Gleaner.
McIntyre added that there would be an overhead link between the new building and the OEC’s 20-year-old main office building to allow for easy flow between them.
The new facility will also be designed to operate 24 hours to support the assessment, processing, and administration of examinations across the region and is aligned with the OEC’s strategic goal of establishing a digital examination hub.
The OEC has been administering a United Kingdom-based international suite of secondary-level examinations for over 135 years. Since 1979, the OEC has also been administering the regional Caribbean Examinations Council’s (CXC) examinations and currently administers international professional and semi-professional examinations for more than 800 examining bodies.
Bennett-Easy added that he intended for the facility to administer exams digitally and to offer “as many digital services as possible”.
Virtual-reality labs
This expansion would also facilitate augmented-reality and virtual-reality labs, an area to accommodate the CXC operations in Jamaica, and create more space to alleviate staff feeling cramped, he said.
“We have invested heavily in providing digital facilities for a lot of schools. We’ve spent in excess of $700 million over the last six or seven years, providing computers for, I think, more than a hundred schools across the island,” he said.
The facility, he continued, would allow for those institutions or students who do not have their own facilities for the sitting of exams, along with accommodating companies that need to conduct training sessions for staff members.
Hector Stephenson, executive director of the OEC, in his remarks, stated that following its recent ISO 9001: 2015 certification, an international recognition, the commission is focused on two critical objectives moving forward. These are to maintain and add value to the core business in an e-testing environment and to create new business opportunities within the digital space to remain viable.
“With respect to the first objective, the OEC needs to remain relevant in the business of proctoring examinations,” he said.
He further added that “with regard to the second objective, the OEC is seizing the opportunities that will be a direct response to the administration of exams in the digital environment”.
“As the organisation transforms itself to become the centre for on-demand and session-based computerised examinations, especially at the post-secondary level in the Caribbean, it must evolve to form the nerve centre for the revolution of technical problems associated with those examinations,” he said.
Stephenson added that the new facility would play a fundamental role in the strategic direction and diversification of products and services of the OEC.
It will help to expand the OEC’s capacity to respond to the changing environment and examination landscape while also helping to expand the commission’s business ventures of digitisation, data storage, and processing, a virtual science facility, and a customer engagement centre, which have been in the incubation period for the past five years.