The tender closing date for the $2.5bn King Abdullah Medical City project in Saudi Arabia has been extended to 29 December.

Contractors were originally invited to submit bids on 30 September, and a number of deadline extensions have followed. The prequalifiers for the construction contract are:

• Nesma (local)/Samsung C&T (South Korea)
• El-Seif Engineering Construction (local)/Hyundai Engineering & Construction (South Korea)
• ABV Rock (local)
• Al-Rashid (local)
• Al-Bawani (local)/FCC Construccion (Spain)
• Saudi Binladin Group (local)
• Al-Muhaidib (local)/GS Engineering (South Korea)/Habtoor Leighton (UAE/Australia)
• Azmeel (local)/Baytur (Turkey)
• Al-Yamama (local)/Ssangyong (South Korea)

The three-year construction contract involves building a major new healthcare facility serving the cities of Jeddah and Mecca in the Western Region of the kingdom.

Located 28 kilometres from Mecca and 56km from Jeddah, the development will include hospital buildings, research centres, administration buildings and a housing community, with a total built-up area of nearly 1 million square metres. The medical buildings will have a total built-up area of 605,869 sq m, the medical service facilities 43,098 sq m, the non-medical units 214,456 sq m and the utilities serving the development 53,840 sq m.

The medical buildings will involve a tertiary care hospital and research centre with 1,000 beds, comprising a main hospital with 850 beds and a rehabilitation centre with 150 beds. The main hospital will have oncology, neurology, cardiology and specialised surgery departments.

A team of US-based RTKL and the local Saudi Diyar is the project engineer. The client representative is King Abdullah Medical City. The project is one of several medical cities the Saudi government is planning, in order to expand healthcare infrastructure to cope with rapid population growth.