Qatar Railways Company (QRail) is inviting companies to submit bids by 20 February for the contract to provide project management consultancy services for Doha metro.

The PMC covers the entire Doha metro. However, each line will have its own PMC meaning the metro will have four PMCs in total. QRail might decide to put two lines in one package at a later stage.

Construction of the Red line is known as Fifa priority phase 1. Germany’s Deutsche Bahn is carrying out the preliminary engineering for the Red line.

The 14 packages of the first phase covers rolling stock, systems, civil works and preparatory works. Nine of the packages cover civil works and six of these are urgent underground packages. Interested companies met on 10 January to discuss their preferences of the six underground packages. Four of the packages cover tunnels and stations and the remaining two packages cover two flagship stations.

Sources close to the bidding process say that they expect about 30 companies to be shortlisted. One option is to cut the shortlisted companies down to about 10. The second option is to group four or five shortlisted companies together for each package. In October 2011, about 80 companies submitted expressions of interest for the civil works.

The tender is likely to be issued before the second quarter of this year. It is still not clear whether the tender will cover all six packages or just one. There are likely to be individual PMC contracts awarded for different packages of the Doha metro project. However, this depends on the total number of packages tendered.

All of the issues are to be discussed at a presentation due to be held at the end of January.

The US’ Parsons Brinckerhoff is strategic programme manager for the $35bn Qatar Integrated Rail Programme (MEED 13:9:11).