Metro Jeddah Company has invited firms to attend a meeting next week to discuss the Obhur suspension bridge, which is to be developed as a public-private partnership (PPP) project.

Those invited to attend the meeting include international and local engineering and design firms, civil works contractors, potential local concessionaires and mostly local banks.

Metro Jeddah Company appointed a consortium of Bahrain-based GIB Capital and US/India’s Synergy Consulting as financial adviser to the project in April last year.

Global firm Dentons and US-based HDR were appointed as legal and technical advisers, respectively.

A source earlier told MEED the procurement process is expected to take more than a year.

Obhur suspension bridge will link the north and south banks of Obhur Creek in north Jeddah.

It will extend 2 kilometres across the creek and will be 74 metres wide with a maximum clearance of 51 metres. The bridge is designed to include four lanes for road traffic in each direction and a segment of the planned Jeddah Metro Orange Line.

The bridge was tendered as an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract in 2015. MEED understands a joint venture of Spain’s Obrascon Huarte Lain (OHL), Lebanon’s Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) and Japan’s IHI was the frontrunner for the contract.

However, the contract was not awarded and the scheme has since been converted into a PPP.