McGraw-Hill Construction Design-Build

Contract negotiations started recently for a project to augment water supplies to the Jordanian capital of Amman. The package, estimated to be worth nearly $800 million, will include a design-build segment for a well system and more than 300 km of pipeline to transport about 100 million cu m of water annually.

Accustomed to water rationing, greater Amman’s 1.6 million people need to exploit new sources. For long-term secure supplies, the Jordanians have decided to tap abundant groundwater in the Disi-Mudawara area. Though distant, the sandstone aquifer is located at a relatively shallow 100 m below ground.

This spring, the government chose a consortium led by the Saudi Arabian construction group Saudi Oger Ltd., Abha, and a division of the U.S.-based design firm and contractor Black & Veatch Inc., Overland Park, Kan., along with Greek and Turkish contractors. The contract also includes financing and long-term operations and maintenance.

Fast-track bidding is being used to procure a design-build contract for a $50-million oil bunkering and storage terminal in Port Said, Egypt. Five short-listed companies will be supplied with outline plans as they are produced by the preliminary design consultant to give them a running start when bid documents are issued this summer. The owner, a local oil company, wants construction started this fall with completion in early 2006.

Firms from Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands, Turkey and the U.S. will likely bid for the project, says Ozgur Balaban, project manager with U.K.-based Scott Wilson Kirkpatrick (SWK), Ashford. The firm began working for the Egyptian owner, Mashreq Petroleum Co., in March. SWK will develop plans for the terminal and then take the job through procurement and supervise construction. To speed the award, designers and potential bidders are collaborating in an "interactive tendering process," says Balaban.

The project covers about 10 hectares of reclaimed land at Port Said’s East Port on the Suez Canal’s Mediterranean Sea approach. It is being designed to handle up to 2 million tons of oil a year and provide tank storage for some 150,000 cu m. It will accommodate vessels up to 80,000 dry tons.

Bechtel Leads $2.5-Billion Airport Expansion In UAE

With schematic designs now several months into production, a huge land-reclamation effort will start later this year for $2.5 billion of work on Qatar’s New Doha International Airport, located in the United Arab Emirates. Due for completion in late 2008, the project is the first phase of a three-phase development leading to an airport capable of handling 50 million passengers a year by 2015.

The phase-one design-build contract was awarded in January to Bechtel Inc., San Francisco. “Bechtel developed the project’s master plan from which we are working,” says Peter Clarke, a Bechtel spokesman at its London base for Middle East work. “We started with a clean sheet of paper.”

Located just east of the existing facility, the new airport will cover a 2,200-hectare site extensively reclaimed from the Gulf. The first phase will have two runways and a 24-gate, 140,000-sq-m, three-floor terminal. Its initial capacity will be 12 million passengers a year. Qatar Airways, the national airline and airport operator, is part of the owner organization.

Bechtel won the contract against French and Dutch-led competition. It is using various offices of U.S.-based Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum Inc. for architectural services on the terminal building. Halcrow Group, London, is handling land-reclamation engineering and Ecology and Environment Inc., Lancaster, N.Y., is managing environmental issues.

In the next phase, to be procured in line with traffic growth, the terminal will be expanded to 219,000 sq m and another 16 gates added. A suspended monorail will be built to move passengers through the enlarged building. In the last stage, 40 more gates will be built and the terminal expanded to 416,000-sq m.