The government of Kuwait has reportedly awarded the contract to build a long-planned new terminal at Kuwait International Airport (KIA) to the Turkish-Kuwaiti consortium whose whose earlier bid had been dismissed.
Turkey’s Limak Holding and Kuwait’s Kharafi National has at last won the deal with a $4.34bn bid, which is $460m cheaper than a previous offer of $4.8bn, Reuters reports.
The consortium’s $4.8bn bid was announced as the lowest in November last year, which appeared to pave the way for its winning the contract.
But the major project designed to relieve pressure on KIA with a Foster + Partner’s design was thrown into confusion when the government rejected all bids in January this year.
Yesterday the government’s Central Tenders Committee said the Limak-Kharafi consortium had again submitted the lowest bid during the latest re-tendering.
The race to build the airport extension has been controversial. The project was announced in October 2011, with a design by London-based architecture firm Foster + Partners (pictured). But the first attempt to elicit tenders stalled after firms withdrew their bids, citing difficult contract terms.
The work was retendered again in late 2013, and twice more since then.
Photograph: An interior render of the design by Foster + Partners (Foster + Partners)
