Dubai’s Drake & Scull has been awarded a 340 million Qatari riyal (Dh342.9m) contract for Qatar Rail’s Doha Metro project relating to its depots.
The contract was awarded by Japan’s Fujita Corporation, whose consortium landed a deal in February 2015 to provide all of the metro’s systems and rolling stock, including 75 sets of three-car trains. Fujita’s consortium has appointed Drake & Scull to supply, install, test and commission all the mechanical, electrical and plumbing services required in the depot and stabling yards used for the metro’s red and green lines. Work will be completed by 2019, the year in which the first phase of Doha Metro is set to open.
Ahmad Al Naser, the managing director of Drake & Scull Engineering, said the contract was the company’s second major rail project in the GCC following its work on the Dh35m people-mover system at Dubai International Airport.
Drake & Scull carried out a number of rail projects in the Far East in the 1970s and in the UK in the 1990s and 2000s, but only established a rail presence in the GCC in 2012. Past work outside the region has included light rail and metro projects in Hong Kong, as well as work on the Jubilee Line extension on the London Underground.
Darko Macura, the operations director at Drake & Scull Rail, said it is “actively bidding and tendering for several high-profile rail networks and urban transport projects in the UAE, KSA and Qatar markets".
He added: “We are confident about securing more rail projects in the region."
Mr Macura said the company was looking to land more work on future sections of the Doha Metro.
“The vast scale and ambition of Qatar Rail’s long-term plans offer us potential to secure future components of the planned metro and greater Qatar/GCC related infrastructure," Mr Macura said.
“Notwithstanding the impact of the fall in oil prices on the major regional economies, governments have affirmed their commitment to the creation of a region-wide rail infrastructure."
The first phase of Doha Metro consists of 75 kilometres of track and 37 stations.
Tunnelling work and construction has been split into five packages – major stations, Red Line North, Red Line South, Green Line and the Gold Line.
Earlier this week, Qatar Rail announced that the tunnelling work had been completed on Red Line North, with 41km of tunnels completed from Al Wakrah in the south of Doha to Lusail in the North.
The work has been carried out by a joint venture between Italy’s Salini Impregilo, South Korea’s SK Engineering and Galfar Al Misnad, and has been completed in less than two years, despite tunnelling work being temporarily halted by flooding last year.
Qatar Rail said 85 per cent of all tunnelling work on Doha Metro has now been completed, and the overall project is 37 per cent complete.
“Across the project as a whole we are continuing to move to plan," said Abdulla Al Subaie, the managing director of Qatar Rail.
“Later this year, we will be over halfway to delivering the whole project and tunnelling is expected to finish in the autumn.
“At that point, we move from construction into systems installation as track, power supply and signalling starts to be installed. We also start the architectural finishes of the stations."
Comments ( 0 )
Post a Comment