A fourth contracting group has joined the race for the contract to build what would be the world’s tallest building, the 1 kilometre high Kingdom Tower on the outskirts of Jeddah.

As per report, a JV of the local El-Seif Engineering & Contracting and Belgium’s 6 Construct has now joined the 3 other contracting groups that were short listed in September by the project’s client, Saudi investment firm Kingdom Holding.

The 3 short listed groups were South Korea’s Samsung Corporation with Dubai based Arabtec Construction, Australia’s Multiplex and Saudi Binladin Group.

The firms had originally expected an award to be made in 2009, but the developer now wants to consider additional proposals from other contracting groups that may be able to complete the project at a lower price.

Kingdom has short listed 2 architectural firms for the project. They are the Skidmore of the US, Owings & Merrill, which was responsible for the recently opened Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai and US based Adrian Smith & Gordon Gill Architecture. An architect is expected to be appointed in the coming month.

The report said that US based Pickard Chilton in partnership with UK based Hyder Consulting had also been competing for the role, but that group has dropped out of the competition.

If Kingdom Holding goes ahead with the ambitious project, it will replace Burj Khalifa as the world’s tallest building. The 828 metre high building that was formerly known as the Burj Dubai opened on January 4th 2010.

(Sourced from MEED)