Oman’s Transport and Communications Ministry has opened bids for the project management contract for the planned national railway.

A total of five companies have made technical offers for the contract to manage the construction of a rail network covering more than 2,244 kilometres of track across Oman.

The competing companies are:

• Parsons Brinckerhoff (US)
• Tecnicas Reunidas (Spain)
• Hill International (US)
• Parsons International (US)
• Dohwa Engineering (South Korea)

A total of 29 companies bought the tender documents from the transport ministry.

The submission of bids followed the award for a €28m ($37.3m) consultancy services for the preliminary design of the planned national railway to Italy’s state railway group Italferr.

The railway has been planned for a number of years, but met with delays in 2012 when the government decided to retender the project.

Work resumed on the rail scheme at the beginning of 2013, when the Omani government identified the rail network as a priority investment in its 2013 budget. The government also announced it would use some of the billions of dollars of aid pledged by GCC governments to fund the development.

The prequalification process for various design and build packages is expected to start later this year.