Abu Dhabi’s Department of Transport (DoT) has received bids for the contract to build the first section of Emirates road in Abu Dhabi emirate.

Contractors finally submitted bids on 22 April after the client extended the tender closing date several times. The original closing date was 26 February. The new section of highway will run for 33 kilometres from the Dubai border towards Abu Dhabi city. It will be dual carriageway with four lanes in each direction.

The contract also involves building three new interchanges. The first will be built on the border in the Seih Sedeira area and will be grade separated, meaning it will have either a flyover or underpass. The second will be at grade and will be built in the Maha Forest area. The third interchange will be grade separated and will be built in Al-Samha area and will connect to the existing Sheikh Maktoum bin Saeed al-Maktoum highway near to Taweelah and the new Khalifa port.

The construction work is expected to involve more than 10 million cubic metres of excavation, 10 million cubic metres of backfilling, 1.2 million tonnes of asphalt and about 30,000 tonnes of steel reinforcing bars (rebar).

The consultant for the project is Abu Dhabi office of Aurecon with Australia’s SMEC. The DoT has also invited contractors to bid in May for a contract to build a section of the planned upgrade to the Mafraq to Ghuweifat highway. The improvements were going to be executed as a public-private partnership scheme, but the DoT cancelled those plans in May 2011, after receiving bids in December 2009.