By Ashley Karen
NEOM has chosen several contractors to offer bids for five different contracts to deliver tunnels that will operate as a railway junction for Saudi Arabia’s Neom megaproject.
The selected contractors, including Italy’s WeBuild, Spain’s Acciona, and Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas (FCC), should offer bids by 12 June for contracts to complete the Delta Junction scheme of tunnels linking the Spine with the NEOM Connector.
The Line is one of the new cities planned for the NEOM project, and the Spine is the infrastructure corridor running below this Smart city in the Tabuk region of northwest Saudi Arabia. The NEOM Connector is an infrastructure corridor with 60 Km long to connect The Line and Oxagon, another planned region for this project.
The five contracts of Delta Junction are for approximately 5km of tunnel excavation each, to be delivered with drill, blast, and cut and cover techniques through hard rock. The tunnelling works will be split into two lots, one for south Neom and the other one for north Neom.
Other contractors selected to offer bids for this project include Jeddah-based Almabani, Riyadh-based Al-Ayuni Investments & Contracting, Mumbai-headquartered Larsen & Toubro (L&T), Seoul-based Hyundai Engineering & Construction and Samsung C&T, Beijing-based China Railway Construction Corporation and China State Construction Engineering.
NEOM has already chosen Aecom as the engineering consultant for the project.
The Spine tunnelling works are also currently being tendered. The contracts will cover works on concrete and precast sections installation. The closing date for both contracts has been extended until 11 May.
NEOM appointed Jacobs and Atkins in February 2023 to assist with the construction of the Line, the Saudi Arabia’s innovative linear city.
The Line is a “cognitive city” with 170 Km long and 200 m wide linear development in the desert, being built in Saudi’s Tabuk Province. This city will be a home to 9 M residents in its 34 km2 area bordered by two 500 m-high walls, mirrored on the exterior, and be filled with interconnected mixed-use community spaces across its 135 modules. It is designed to have no cars, streets with zero carbon emissions, but public electrically powered transport operating along the outskirts.
For the first phase of The Line, Aecom and Bechtel have also been selected to provide project management services. Jacobs and Atkins were previously selected under a framework agreement in a five-year contract for consultancy services.
Last summer, Keller signed a major piling contract worth around £51 M on the project, prompting the project to say that other firms with similar skills and reach, if they work on The Line, can earn “hundreds of millions of pounds”.
The total estimated cost of the project is between £83 bn and £166 bn, but some estimates have placed it closer to £830 bn.
Tunnelling works is planned for the Trojena mountain resort, another part of planned cities for NEOM.
Contractors have already been invited to tender for lots related to these tunnelling works, including the use of tunnel boring machines.
The Time Travel tunnel is one of these tunnels, which will have a funicular railway. Trojena has been chosen to host the Asian Winter Games in 2029.
