Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry has selected the local ABV Rock to build a multibillion-dollar medical city in Riyadh.

The ministry has issued a letter of intent to the local contractor, with an official signing of the contract expected imminently. Contractors submitted bids for two medical cities, one in Riyadh and one in Jeddah, for the Interior Ministry in August 2011. The Interior Ministry is still evaluating proposals for the Jeddah Medical City.

The two medical cities will have the same design and will both include three hospitals and all related medical and residential facilities. The medical facilities will have a total built-up area of about 400,000 square metres.

Each complex will also contain academic and clinical centres, as well as a research centre. The residential villas and apartments will have a total built-up area of about 500,000 sq m. The developments are also planned to have office buildings and service stations. The medical complexes will have about 200,000 sq m of car parking.

The consultant for both schemes is the local office of Lebanon’s Dar al-Handasah.

The Interior Ministry medical schemes are part of the government’s plans to build several medical cities to expand its healthcare infrastructure to cope with the country’s rapid population growth.

The Ministry of Health is also planning to build a large medical complex in the Western region. The planned King Abdullah Medical City, located 28 kilometres from Mecca and 56km from Jeddah, will include hospital buildings, research centres, administration buildings, and a housing community with a total built-up area of nearly 1 million sq m.

The medical buildings will have a total built-up area of 605,869 sq m, the medical service buildings will be 43,098 sq m, the non-medical buildings will be 214,456 sq m, and the utilities serving the development will be 53,840 sq m. A team of US-based RTKL and the local Saudi Diyar is the project engineer. The client representative is King Abdullah Medical City. Contractors were invited to submit prequalification entries for the project in October last year.