South Korea’s Samsung C&T has won a $296m contract to build primary infrastructure at Qatar’s Lusail City development.

The Lusail Real Estate Development Company awarded Samsung the 30-month construction contract in the first week of January. The contractor is due to start work before the end of January.

The work will involve the construction of a 10.7km long road, which will include a 1.5km underground motorway. The contract award follows Samsung’s success in the Lusail bridges project in November 2011.

The award on the project is a sign that the developer is pushing ahead with the Lusail development, after the scheme suffered from slow progress since construction work started on the development in 2006. However, Qatar’s success in winning the right to host football’s World Cup in 2022 has given fresh impetus to the Lusail scheme. The Lusail development is key part of the country’s World Cup plans and will accommodate the Lusail Iconic stadium, the largest planned sports arena with a capacity of more than 80,000 people.

Qatar’s Public Works Authority (Ashghal) is also moving ahead with infrastructure schemes that will link the Lusail scheme to Doha. The works authority is currently assessing bids for the first package on the Lusail expressway, which will have about 16 lanes. The second package, which has not yet been tendered, will run beside the Lusail mixed-use development and then onto the Pearl real estate development. The expressway will be about 12km long when completed (MEED 12:8:11).

The Lusail City scheme is one of the biggest commercial projects in the Middle East. Located 22km north of Doha, the scheme covers a total area of 35 square kilometres and is planned to eventually house up to 200,000 people.

The Lusail project is planned to be executed in phases over the next 10 years, and will contain residential clusters, commercial districts, shopping and leisure facilities and two golf courses. The masterplan divides the waterfront development into 19 integrated and mixed-use districts.

The Lusail Real Estate Development Company is a subsidiary of the state-backed real estate developer Qatari Diar.