MEED reported that Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Civil Aviation has received bids from contractors for the 2 major construction contracts on the expansion of King Abdulaziz International airport in Jeddah.

The packages are both design and build. The first contract covers the new terminal building and the second is for infrastructure works. The terminal deal will involve designing and building a 600,000 square meters terminal capable of handling 30 million passengers a year. The infrastructure contract is to design and build runways, tunnels and a light rail system.

According to sources working on the project, the low bidder for both packages is the local Saudi Binladin Group. For the terminal, it submitted a price of SAR 11.3 billion and for the infrastructure; its price is SAR 13.9 billion. Both of SBG's prices were about SAR 3 billion lower than the second lowest bids.

For the terminal, the other bidders are a JV of Saudi Oger and South Africa's Murray & Roberts Contractors at SAR 14.4 billion, the local Almabani General Contractors Company, a consortium of Turkey's TAV, Athens based Consolidated Contractors Company, the local El Seif Engineering & Contracting and the local Al Rajhi Group at SAR 19.1 billion.

The second lowest bidder for the infrastructure is Almabani at SAR 16.8 billion, followed by TAV/CCC/El Seif/Al Rajhi at SAR 18.9 billion; Oger/Murray & Roberts at SAR 19.6 billion and China Harbour Engineering Company.

Gaca had originally planned to award one design contract and separate contracts for the construction of each element of the airport instead of awarding two larger contracts for both design and construction work. It chose to change its procurement strategy to speed up the project in December.

The new procurement strategy will shorten the project's delivery time as contractors will now be able to start some of the construction work before all the design work has been finalised.

(Sourced from MEED)