Saudi Arabia’s Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) has received proposals from two bidders for the contract to build the planned 400,000 cubic-metre-a-day (cm/d) Jeddah 4 desalination plant under a build, finance, transfer (BFT) model.

According to sources close to the scheme, bids were received from the following two groups on 26 October:

• Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction (South Korea)
• Hydrochem (local) / Saudi Services for Electromechanical (SSEM) (local)

According to sources, South Korea’s Doosan submitted the lowest bids, submitting BFT and EPC offers.

MEED reported in September that the client was considering switching the Jeddah 4 project to an independent water project (IWP) model, after having approached prequalified bidders to submit proposals under a BFT structure, under which the contractor would finance the construction of the plant itself, and operate it for one year after completion.

However, a senior SWCC representative recently told MEED that while the client was planning to switch procurement for all future major cogeneration power and water projects and standalone desalination plants to the independent water and power project (IWPP) and IWP models respectively, the Jeddah 4 project could move ahead under an EPC or BFT model due to the urgent capacity requirement.

The Jeddah 4 scheme was originally tendered under a standard engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract in 2015, with the initial bid deadline having been set for 1 December 2015.

SWCC estimates it will need to boost its desalination capacity by 2.2 million cm/d by 2020 to meet the rapidly growing demand.