Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (Dewa) has opened consultancy bids for the planned seawater reverse osmosis (RO) desalination plant at Hassyan.

The client received 11 proposals from nine bidders for the consultancy deal.

The lowest bid of AED23.02m ($6.3m) was submitted by Singapore’s Meinhardt. This was marginally lower than the second-lowest bid of AED23.27m (alternative offer) submitted by the Abu Dhabi office of Austria’s ILF Consulting Engineers. ILF also submitted a proposal of AED28.3m.

US firm Aecom submitted the third-lowest price of AED28.2m for the consultancy deal.

The full list of bidders and prices is:

• Meinhardt (Singapore), AED23.02m
• ILF Consulting Engineers (Austria), AED23.7m (alternative offer), AED28.3m
• Aecom (US), AED28.2m
• Tractebel Engineering (Belgium), AED30.8m
• CDM Smith (US), AED32.1m
• Ficthner (Germany), AED33.7m (Alternative offer), AED40.6m
• Mott Macdonald (UK), AED34.8m
• Consolidated Engineering Company, Khatib & Alami (Lebanon), AED40.1m
• Innogy (Germany), AED142.3m

In June 2016, Dewa awarded a contract to a joint venture of Saudi Arabia’s Acwa Power and China’s Harbin Electric to develop a 2,400MW coal-fired power plant at Hassyan.

The independent power producer (IPP) project is being developed in four 600MW phases, with each unit to be made operational in March each year between 2020 and 2023.

In February this year, Dewa received proposals from consultants for the next planned coal power plant, known as phase 3, at the Hassyan site. The plant is expected to have a capacity of 1,200MW.