18/12/2014 07:08 AST
Just weeks after extending the deadline for the submission of bids for the multibillion dollar Segment 1 of its national railway project, Oman Rail has granted further time to bidders to hand in their pricing offers for this key package.
Accordingly, commercial bids are now due in by March 1, 2015 under the revised timeline announced by the national rail company. Technical offers, however, must be handed in by January 18, 2015.
The latest extension — the second in less than a month — follows a request by a large number of bidders seeking more time to price their offers amid the ongoing economic turmoil in world markets unleashed by sliding international oil prices.
Volatility in commodity prices, weakening currencies, as well as wider global economic uncertainty, have complicated the task of pricing bids for contracts as complex and diverse as Segment 1 of the Oman National Railway project, bidders have argued.
According to analysts, the extension is unlikely to have a significant impact on Oman Rail’s timeframe for the evaluation of bids for the eagerly anticipated Segment 1 package. “The evaluation of offers for contracts of this nature usually follows a two-step process,” an expert explained. “In Step 1, the client — or its representative team — first takes up the technical bids for evaluation. Once a list of technically qualified bidders is compiled, the evaluation team then goes on Step 2, which covers the opening and subsequent evaluation of the commercial offers of only the technically qualified bidders. So it makes little difference to Oman Rail’s evaluation timeline if the commercial bids are submitted later.”
Segment 1, covering a 207 km stretch from Sohar Port to Buraimi, is a priority for execution because it also represents the Oman link in a pan-Gulf network connecting all six members states of the GCC bloc. The inter-GCC rail network, one of many landmark initiatives approved by the bloc’s leaders with the aim of integrating their economies and peoples, is due to come into operation by 2018.
In contention for the lucrative Design & Build package are 18 consortiums and joint ventures that have been prequalified by Oman Rail to compete for this segment. Awaiting the successful bidder is a weighty package of works encompassing virtually all aspects of rail design, engineering, supply, construction, installation and commissioning. It requires the contractor to undertake, among other things, topographic and geotechnical site surveys; earthworks design; hydrology and drainage; design and construction of major and minor structures such as bridges, tunnels and viaducts; track works; stations; freight facilities and yards; and the provision of line maintenance facilities.
For the procurement, supply, installation of commissioning of the plethora of communications and technology systems associated with the project, the successful bidder will be required to subcontract this component of the package to any one of the five consortiums prequalified by Oman Rail for the Rail Technology Systems package.
Oman Daily Observer
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