Qatar’s Public Works Ministry (Ashghal) is set to award the contract to build and maintain the E Ring Road north-south link today to South Korea’s Daewoo Engineering & Construction (Daewoo E&C).

This wil be the third road contract award in Qatar for its Expressway Programme in under three weeks.

On 23 August, the government awarded a $2.09bn deal for the construction and maintenance of the 34-kilometre Al-Khor Expressway to Turkey’s Tekfen Construction.

On 4 September, it awarded a joint venture of Turkey’s Yuksel Insaat and Spain’s Ferrovial Agroman a QR2.87bn ($789m) design-and-build deal for the north section of the Al-Bustan Road.

Unlike 39 of the 40 packages for the $15bn Expressway Programme, the Al-Khor package was a directly negotiated contract, which momentarily raised fears Qatar might be taking this route for future schemes.

Excluding the Al-Khor Expressway package, some 18 packages of the Expressway Programme worth a total of $13bn are now under construction, according to regional projects tracker MEED Projects. Five packages, collectively worth $874m, have been completed.