The contract is worth an estimated $75m. Work on the 12 kilometre stretch of road includes building six new bridges and is expected to be complete in late 2009. The client is the Muscat Municipality and the project's consultant is the UK's Atkins.

Seeb’s coastal road was damaged when cyclone Gonu hit Oman last June. The cyclone has also delayed the expansion of Seeb International Airport, which was due to be completed in 2010.

Tenders for the main building and civil packages for the airport, which acts as a hub for Oman Air, were expected in the months following a prequalification exercise last April. These were delayed while Muscat concentrated on rebuilding areas damaged by the tropical storm. The project is now expected to be completed in 2011 (MEED 13:7:07).

Simplex Infrastructures also recently won a $72m contract from Qatalum for work on a thermal power plant at Mesaieed site in Qatar in early February. Qatalum, a joint venture between Qatar Petroleum and Norway’s Hydro, is building a 585,000-tonne-a-year aluminium smelter at the site that is due to start production in 2010.