Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Civil Aviation (Gaca) has extended the bid deadlines for two projects to expand domestic airports in the country.

The first tender is for the expansion of Al-Jouf airport, which will involve the construction of a new terminal building along with other airport infrastructure, such as a control tower, car parks and a mosque. The deadline for bids, which initially had been set at 25 March, has now been extended to 17 June.

The second tender is for the upgrade of the airside of King Fahad International airport in Dammam. The scope of work includes upgrading runways, taxiways, control tower, maintenance buildings and landscaping. The deadline for bids, which was initially 1 May, has been extended to 28 May.

Several regional airports are being developed by Gaca. In February, the local Al-Jaber submitted a low bid of SR1.8bn ($480m) for the contract to build the new Abha airport. Al-Jaber’s price is about 5 per cent lower than the second-lowest price of SR1.9bn submitted by the local Al-Mabani General Contractors. The third-lowest bidder is Kuwait First Group, with a price of SR2bn. The new terminal will cover a total area of 80,000 square metres and will have 21 passenger gates.

In March, Gaca issued two tenders for the redesign of seven domestic airports as part of an ongoing expansion of airports across the country.

The scope of work includes the design of new passenger terminals, runways, aprons, control towers, maintenance buildings, VIP lounges and landscaping.

The redesign of the seven airports has been split into two separate contracts. The first tender is for design work at Al-Ahsa, Al-Wajh, Sharurah and Wadi al-Dawasir airports. Bids for the first tender were due on 30 April.

The second tender is for the redesign of Qaisumah, Rafha and Turaif airports. Bids for the second tender were submitted by 4 May.

In June 2013, Gaca received bids from 17 groups for the contract to build the new King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz airport in Jizan. The scheme involves building a three-storey passenger terminal, a control tower, air cargo zones and other facilities. The terminal will have 10 gates and a VIP lounge.

A consortium of Saudi Lebanese Modern Construction Company (Salmoc), Safari & Salmoc and Al-Subaie (all local) submitted the low bid of SR2.57bn ($685m). This was 7 per cent less than the SR2.76bn price submitted by the second-lowest bidder, the local Saudi Pan Kingdom Company (Sapac).

A much larger project is King Khalid International airport. In 2013, Gaca invited nine contracting groups to bid for the contract to expand the existing terminals 3 and 4 at the airport in Riyadh. The tender closing date was 27 February.

In February 2013, the local arm of US-based Aecom, Aecom Arabia, was appointed to project manage the expansion scheme. The work aims to increase the airport’s annual capacity to 24 million passengers from 14 million today.