Kuwait’s Partnerships Technical Bureau (PTB) has received bids from nine groups to advise on a wastewater treatment plant at Umm al-Hayman.

The winning group will provide technical, financial, environmental, and legal experience. The chosen consultant will be tasked with completing a study, establishing a project company and closing financing within 18 months of appointment.

The PTB is finalising its evaluation of the technical bids. The bids that receive 70 per cent or more in the technical evaluation scoring will be assessed for commercial merit. Eighty per cent of the evaluation will be on the technical aspects of each bid, while 20 per cent will focus on the price of each bid.

According to its ambitious schedule, PTB aims to offer the consultancy contract in February. The award will then need to be approved by Kuwait’s Audit Bureau.

A total of 10 groups were prequalified to bid for the contract:

• Bank Muscat (Oman)/Chadbourne & Parke (US)
• Booz & Company (US)/Mott MacDonald (UK)/Dewey & LeBoeuf (US)
• IPA Energy & Water Economics (UK)/Blakes (Canada)/Dar al-Handasah (Shair & Partners) (Lebanon)
• Ernst & Young (UK)/Trowers & Hamlins (UK)
• Deutsche Bank (Germany)/Simmons & Simmons (UK)
• PricewaterhouseCoopers (UK)/Pinsent Masons (UK)
• HSBC (UK)/Norton Rose (UK)
• KPMG (UK)/Allen & Overy (UK)
• Gulf Investment Corporation (Kuwait)/DLA Piper (UK)
• Citigroup (US)/Clifford Chance (UK)

The chosen consultant will advise on the expansion of the Umm al-Hayman plant from its current wastewater treatment capacity of 27,000 cubic metres a day (cm/d) to around 600,000 cm/d.

The expansion project will be carried out in two phases. The first phase will see around 400-450,000 cm/d capacity brought online by 2015. The enlarged Umm al-Hayman wastewater treatment project will serve a new city at the site.

The extension of the Umm al-Hayman facility will also treat raw sewage that will be diverted from the Riqqa plant, which has a capacity of 180,000 cm/d, which is to be decommissioned.

The project, located on the coast some 50 kilometres south of Kuwait City, was originally to be developed as a design and construct project by the Public Works Ministry, who had appointed Dar al-Handasah in January 2009 as the consultant for the design, construction supervision and environmental study (MEED 19:1:10).

A publicly traded project company will be established with 50 per cent of the ownership held in shares. The developer will take a 40 per cent stake, while the government is to retain a 10 per cent stake. The company will be floated before or around the start of construction of the project.