MEED reported in January that the group had been given verbal confirmation of the award from the client. A formal letter of award has since been received, confirming the SR8bn ($2.2bn) contract.

The consortium is now engaged in meetings with the Interior Ministry to finalise construction and technical details.

Mobilisation is due to begin imminently, and it is expected that the initial work will commence on the east coast. The work is expected to take five years.

The value of the contract is less than one-third of the value of the original bids, submitted in the summer of 2008, before the client revised the scope of the project. Original bids ranged from SR28bn to SR37bn.

It is the final piece of the Interior Ministry’s plan to improve security along the country’s land and sea borders, and is the biggest security project of its kind in the world.

The project covers a distance of about 6,000 kilometres. It involves installing a radar-based system to detect incursions along Saudi Arabia’s border with Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Oman and Yemen, as well as its Gulf and Red Sea coasts.

Al-Rashid and Eads won the first phase of the project, covering the border with Iraq, in June 2008.