Bahrain’s Ministry of Works, Municipalities Affairs & Urban Planning has received bids from five firms for the contract to provide consultancy services for projects to develop wastewater plants in the Southern City and East Sitra areas of Bahrain.

The lowest bid of BD457,606 ($1.2m) was submitted by UK/Dutch consultant Hyder. This was more than 37 per cent lower than the BD730,341 price submitted by the UK/local MWH Khonji, the second lowest bidder.

The client opened the proposals on 6 July. The proposed Southern City and East Sitra plants are part of Bahrain’s plans to upgrade and expand the country’s wastewater infrastructure.

In May, MEED reported that the works ministry had received further technical clarifications from bidders for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract for the Tubli sewage treatment plant expansion.

The ministry received proposals from five bidders on 17 August 2016 for the EPC deal. MEED reported in January that bidders had been invited to submit further technical clarifications for the Tubli scheme, having sought initial clarifications in November.

The bidders were:

• Acciona Agua (Spain) / Mushrif Trading (Kuwait)
• Al-Ghanim International (Kuwait) / PWT Wasser (Germany) / Metito (UAE)
• Azmeel (Saudi Arabia) / Tecton ( UAE) / WTE (Germany)
• Combined Group Contracting Company (Kuwait) / Samsung Engineering (South Korea)
• Six Construct (Belgium) / Canar (local) / Wabag (local)

The project has faced a number of delays in the prequalification and bidding stages. MEED reported in May 2015 that 10 groups had been prequalified to participate in the tender. The authority had received prequalification documents from 25 groups in January 2014.

The expansion will double the capacity of the plant from 200,000 cubic metres a day (cm/d) to 400,000 cm/d. Tubli is currently dealing with more than 300,000 cm/d of wastewater, leading to raw sewage discharges into the sea.