Saudi Arabia’s National Water Company (NWC) has received two bids for a water management contract covering the cities of Mecca and Taif and expects to select the winning bidder by June.

According to NWC, the bidders are France’s Saur with Saudi Arabia’s Zamil Operations & Maintenance Company (Zomco); and a consortium of Malaysia’s firm Ranhill, India’s Jamshedpur Utilities & Services Company (Jusco), and Saudi Arabia’s Al-Amal Group.

The technical and financial evaluation of the bids will be completed by the end of this month and a contract award will be made soon afterwards.

The winning bidder will be expected to commence the first phase of the scheme in the third quarter of this year. Although the scope has not been finalised, the contract will mostly involve managing the distribution of water in the two cities.

Similar contracts to cover water management in Medina and Dammam will follow once the Mecca and Taif contracts have been awarded (MEED 7:1:10).

A request for proposals for Medina will be issued in September with bids due to be submitted in November. The contract award is scheduled for January 2011.

The request for proposals for the Dammam contract will be issued in May 2011. The deadline for bids is planned for August 2011 and an award is due in October that year.