After years of waiting in the wings as its neighbours moved forward with their railway projects, Oman is almost ready to start building its own national rail network.

Muscat’s plans are ambitious. The sultanate is the GCC’s second-largest country by area and the most topographically diverse. Consequently, its $15bn national railway is one of the most challenging rail schemes in the region, with the proposed 2,444-kilometre system passing through mountains and crossing deserts.

Rail connections

The network will connect Oman’s major ports and cities, including Muscat, Sohar, Duqm and Salalah, in addition to linking with the UAE’s Etihad Rail project and the wider GCC rail network.

The Omani section of the network will have 46 stations, eight marshalling yards and nine intermodal yards. It will also require 12,000km of rail and 10.2 million sleepers.

The first phase of the scheme comprises a 242km section from Sohar port to Al-Misfah in Muscat, an 8km spur line to the Sohar railway yard, a 20km link from Al-Misfah to Muscat central station, a 486km track from Muscat to Duqm port and an 84km section from Sinaw to Ibra.

A 136km track from Sohar to Al-Ain in the UAE, with a 27km spur to Buraimi, and a 58km line from Sohar to Khatmat Malaha on the border with the UAE are also part of the first phase of the project.

The timeframe is tight; the first segment of the railway is due to start operations in four years’ time, in 2018. By comparison, Etihad Rail awarded the construction contract for phase one of its Etihad railway in the UAE in late 2011, and although work on the scheme is well-advanced, two and a half years later, operations have yet to begin.

To manage and help expedite the development of the railway, Oman’s Transport & Communications Ministry has established an operating vehicle named Oman Railway Company and has awarded the UK-based Grant Thornton a deal to study the organisational structure of the new entity.

The scale of the project means it is already attracting widespread interest from operators, consultants and contractors. In August last year, the Transport & Communications Ministry awarded a e28m ($37.3m) consultancy services deal for the preliminary design of the railway to Italian state railway group Italferr, and since then there has been a flurry of bidding and prequalification activity for various roles on the scheme.

International expertise

International operators looking to take part in the project will have to wait until the end of this year to find out if there is a role available for them. In late March, Abdulrahman Salem al-Hatmi, the director of the railway project at the Transport & Communications Ministry, said a decision on whether Oman would operate the network itself or partner with an international rail operator would most likely be made in the second half of this year.

Other GCC states are utilising the experience of international operators. Etihad Rail confirmed in March that it had signed a joint venture with DB Schenker Rail, a subsidiary of Germany’s Deutsche Bahn (DB), to operate and maintain the UAE federal railway.

Firms have already submitted bids for the project management consultancy (PMC) deal. A consortium led by South Korea’s Dohwa Engineering submitted the lowest bid. The winner of the contract will be responsible for the entire execution of the project and is also expected to work with the government and its representative institutions after the rollout and launch of the rail network.

The selected consortium will be responsible for procuring rolling stock, reviewing the contract process, and supervising contract management and construction, as well as project management services. The ministry received two prices from bidding consortiums.

The Dohwa Engineering-led consortium, which includes Oman’s National Engineering Office, Korea Rail Network Authority, First China Railway and India’s Balaji Railroad Systems, submitted the low bid of RO34.3m ($89.2m), along with a second bid of RO106.8m.

The consortium comprising Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas, Lebanon’s Dar al-Handasah and Spanish firm Ineco offered the second-lowest bid of RO59.5m, along with a second bid of RO165.1m.

In third place was a consortium of US-based Parsons International and Aecom, together with France’s Systra, which submitted prices of RO78.8m and RO186m.

Construction work

For contractors and suppliers, Oman Railway Company invited local and international firms to prequalify for work on the project in mid-February.

Companies then attended question-and-answer sessions and are now waiting to hear if they have been prequalified. “We attended sessions in late March,” says an international contractor. “Lots of major players were there as well as a lot of consultants.”

There will be two prequalification lists, one for infrastructure and the other for information technology (IT) systems. The list of prequalified companies will be valid for four years. The construction tender will involve the first section of the scheme, which will be about 170km long and connect Sohar port to the UAE border at Buraimi.

The other sections, which connect the Salalah and Duqm ports with the GCC railway, will be limited to the firms that prequalified for this tender only.

Oman Railway Company has said that upon completing the prequalification stage (which will coincide with the completion of the design of the Buraimi-Sohar segment in August) it will float the execution tender to companies that have been prequalified for infrastructure, subject to whether they use the services of the firms that have been selected for the IT systems as subcontractors.

While the primary focus will be the engineering challenges that the project presents, a more daunting issue for Oman will be securing the right resources.

Work is well under way on the first phase of the UAE’s national rail system and contracts for the construction of the network’s second phase are expected to be awarded during the second quarter of this year.

Qatar’s Long-Distance Rail Network will be built at about the same time as Oman’s national rail network. In late March, Qatar Railways Company (Qatar Rail) invited companies to prequalify for construction work, and tenders for the first phase are due to be released to a shortlist of prequalified contractors in late August. A contract award is expected in mid-March 2015.

As with Oman’s network, the first phase of Qatar’s railway project is due to be completed in 2018. It involves building a 146km-long rail line running from the border with Saudi Arabia to Mesaieed and the New Doha Port Project on the east coast of the peninsula, with an inland station known as Doha West International that will connect to the Doha Metro.

Metro developments

These national rail networks will also have to compete for resources with various metro schemes across the region. Last year, Riyadh awarded more than $22bn-worth of deals for the delivery of six lines of its metro network.

Similarly, Doha awarded close to $10bn-worth of construction contracts for the first phase of its metro system in 2013 and has continued to award contracts this year. In March, it selected a consortium led by Greece’s Aktor for the construction of the Gold Line, and a consortium led by Spain’s FCC to build the elevated and at-grade sections of the Red Line South.

Later this year, it plans to award contracts for the rolling stock and systems, and the construction of three other sections of elevated and at-grade line.

More metros are planned elsewhere in the GCC. In Saudi Arabia, consultants are competing for project management roles on metros for Mecca, Medina and Jeddah, and in the UAE, Abu Dhabi is preparing to issue tender documents for its metro this year.

As these schemes move forward, the competition for resources will become even more intense. For Oman, this means it has to secure the right people and resources as quickly as possible, or it could be left waiting in the wings for even longer.