Located on Sowwah Island, between Reem Island and the Mina Zayed area of Abu Dhabi Island, the Cleveland Clinic will have a 360-bed, 220,000-square-metre hospital, a central utility plant, and parking for 3,200 cars.

The bidders are the local/Australian Al-Habtoor Leighton Group; Spain’s Obrascon Huarte Lain with the local Al-Naboodah Contracting; the local Arabtec Construction with Greece’s Aktor; the local/UK Dutco Balfour Beatty with Athens-based Consolidated Contractors Company; Saudi Oger’s local subsidiary Oger Abu Dhabi; and the local/Belgian Six Construct Abu Dhabi with South Korea’s Samsung Corporation.

The deadline for commercial bids is late October.

Prior to the tender being issued in July, contractors believed the client, state-run investment vehicle Mubadala Development Company, would negotiate the deal directly with the Arabtec/Aktor joint venture.

Mubadala held talks with the joint venture in the third quarter of 2008 to carry out the project on a design-and-build basis.

US-based Aecom is the engineer. Local developer Aldar Properties is managing the construction on behalf of Mubadala.

Mubadala is also planning to tender a contract to build its planned Tawam hospital in Al-Ain by the end of 2010, but has yet to set a date for the tender.