Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (Dewa) has received bids from seven consultancy firms for the contract to provide supervision services on a project to build a water transmission pipeline and associated works across the emirate.

France’s Bureau Veritas submitted the lowest bid of AED18.3m ($4.98m) for the consultancy deal. Japan’s NJS Consultants submitted the second lowest bid of AED19.96m, with the local Aqleh Engineering Consultant submitting the third lowest bid of AED20.6m.

The UK’s MWH submitted the fourth lowest bid of AED22.1m.

The full list of bidders and prices is:

• Bureau Veritas (France), AED18.3m
• NJS Consultants (Japan), AED19.96m
• Aqleh Engineering Consultant (local), AED20.6m
• MWH (UK), AED22.1m
• ILF Consulting Engineers (Austria), AED25m
• Consolidated Engineering Company (local), AED26.6m
• Arcadis Consulting (Netherlands), AED38.8m
• Dar al Handasah Consultants (Lebanon), AED39.8m

The project is part of Dubai’s plans to upgrade and expand its water infrastructure to cope with rising demand for potable water.

MEED reported in February that Dewa had awarded the contract to a joint venture of Spain’s Acciona and Belgium’s Besix to build a new desalination plant at Jebel Ali.

The planned reverse osmosis (RO) plant will have a capacity of 40 million imperial gallons a day and is due to be operational by April 2020.