Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry has extended the bid deadline for the contract to build a new headquarters building in the western city of Jeddah.

Contractors now have until 7 May to submit prices for the construction contract. The previous submission date was 25 March.

The Interior Ministry has become one of Saudi Arabia’s key state construction clients in recent years, having tendered several multibillion-dollar projects. These have included the various phases of its King Abdullah Project (KAP) security network programme, and major medical cities in Riyadh and Jeddah.

For the KAP security network, the ministry recently invited contractors to submit bids for phases 2d and 2e of the programme. The packages were formerly part of the contract that awarded to the local Saudi Oger in 2011 for the second phase of the KAP scheme. The ministry cancelled Oger’s contract in 2012 for undisclosed reasons and has retendered the second phase as several separate packages.

In December, the local El-Seif Engineering Contracting Company was awarded an estimated SR2.5bn ($667m) contract to build phase 2a of the KAP programme.

In January 2013, the ministry awarded a contract to the local ABV Rock to build a multibillion-dollar medical city in Riyadh.