Egypt’s National Authority for Tunnels (NAT) has awarded a $110m consultancy contract for the first phase of Cairo Metro Line 4 to a consortium of Japanese and local firms.

The consortium members are:

• Nippon Koei (Japan)
• Nippon Civic (Japan)
• Oriental Consultancy (Japan)
• Ace Consulting Engineers (local)
• Ehaf Consulting Engineers (local)

The award of the consultancy package will be followed by the release of the tender for the four packages of the first phase, which is being funded by Japan Bank for International Cooperation (Jbic).

NAT has completed the evaluation of prequalification documents for the four packages required to build the first phase of Line 4.

Groups that have been prequalified for the systems package include:

• Mitsubishi / Orascom Construction
• Marubeni (Japan)
• Hitachi / Sumitomo (Japan)
• Toyo / Mitsui (Japan)

Companies that were prequalified for the two civil works package are:

• Shimizu Corporation (Japan)
• Taisei Corporation (Japan) / Orascom Construction (local)

Two firms – Sojitz and Mitsubishi (both of Japan) - have been prequalified for the supply of the rolling stock.

Line 4 will be constructed in two phases and will run for 43 kilometres from west to east Cairo.

It will connect 6th October and the New Cairo satellite cities with the existing metro network, catering to areas including Al-Ahram, Faisal, Giza, Nasr City and Al-Azhar University.

The first phase will have a total length of 18.8km and feature 17 stations. It will extend from the multimodal station west of the Ring Road to the Grand Egyptian Museum and on to El-Remayah Square to link with the Giza station of Line 2, El-Malek el-Saleh station of Line 1, and to Al-Fustat station.

Award for these contracts are expected in 2017.