Denzil Ferguson explaining features of his block laying system in this 2004 file photo.

Denzil 'Dino' Ferguson, housing developer, inventor of the Fercon building system, and former president of the Jamaica Block Manufacturers' Association, died yesterday after a brief illness.

Ferguson, 59, died in Maryland, USA, two weeks after he had gone there to seek treatment for advanced cancer of the bile duct. His body is being flown back to Jamaica for burial, family members said yesterday.

Ferguson dedicated much of the latter part of his life to the development of the innovative Fercon system, which, he said, reduced the time and improved the accuracy of laying blocks, and could cut construction costs by 20 per cent.
The system, which has been featured in the pages of this newspaper, took over 10 years to develop, and had neared a point of being launched on a national scale when Ferguson took ill. A worldwide search via the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) revealed no similar type in use.

It was officially launched in 2004 by minister of commerce, science and technology, Phillip Paulwell, at the National Tool and Engineering Institute in Kingston.

Since then, the system, made of pulleys, pumps, conveyor belts, and vacuums, has been used by Ferguson in the construction of houses in Three Oaks Gardens and Red Hills in Kingston, among other projects.

Ferguson was also a member of the Kiwanis Club of North St Andrew where he served as president a few years ago. He was actively involved as a mentor in the Circle K Club of the Kiwanis.

However, it was for his role in the construction industry that he will be best remembered - first as a blockmaker, and Jamaica's foremost installer of blockmaking plants and as the island's representative for Columbia Block Machines of the USA, one of the world's largest block machine companies.

Ferguson is survived by his wife Carolyn, and six children.

Halle Berry and her picture-perfect family co-ordinate in grey

Cheating PS

'What was I thinking?' Chris Brown speaks out