Bahrain’s Public Works Ministry has received technical bids from six companies for a consultancy contract for a treated sewage effluent (TSE) scheme at the Muharraq sewage treatment plant.

The ministry received the technical submissions from the consultants on 21 March. The contract involves providing advisory services for the design and supervision of a project to utilise the treated water from the Muharraq plant, which is located in the northeast of the capital, Manama.

The six firms which submitted bids are:

• ACE Al-Moayed (local)
• Dar al-Handasah (Lebanon)
• Hyder Consult (UK)
• Jennings O’Donovan (Ireland)
• Madaen Urban (local)
• MWH Khonji  (local)

In February 2011, the Public Works Ministry awarded a consortium of South Korea’s Samsung Engineering Company, Abu Dhabi financial services firm Invest AD and the UK’s United Utilities International the contract to build the Muharraq plant.

The project is being debt financed by the Export-Import Bank of Korea (Kexim), Japanese lender Sumitomo Mitsui and French banks Natixis and Credit Agricole. The banks joined the deal towards the end of 2010 and will together provide about $300m

The plant will process 100,000 cubic metres a day (cm/d) and is scheduled to achieve completion after 30 months. Samsung Engineering and United Utilities will handle operations and maintenance for 24 years after completion.

Bahrain is also expecting to tender the main construction contract to double the capacity of its Tubli wastewater treatment plant by the end of 2013.

The construction contract is expected to be tendered as a design-build-operate contract, with a short-term operational period of two years. The expansion of the plant will increase its capacity of the wastewater treatment plant from the current 200,000 cm/d to 400,000 cm/d.

The Tubli expansion project was originally scheduled to follow the example of the Muharraq wastewater treatment plant and be procured by a public-private partnership (PPP) model. The Works Ministry, however, has re-evaluated the Tubli plans and will now develop the project using a more traditional procurement method.