BUSINESS

Bombardier, Gammon to bid for Dubai project

By V Keshavdev in Milan
November 15, 2005 12:57 IST
The Canada-based Bombardier Transportation, a global transport solutions major, has tied up with civil construction major Gammon India.

The duo will bid for the monorail automated people mover system in the $1.5 billion city of Arabia, which will be set up in the heart of a $5 billion theme park being built in Dubai called Dubailand.

Bombardier will be submitting the bid on November 16. The other bidder for the project is Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which has teamed with Obayashi Corporation.

As per the memorandum of understanding signed between the two, Gammon will build stations, via ducts, depots and operating control room across the six-and-a-half kilometre project, comprising 14 stations.

"We had signed the pact two months ago with Gammon," said Ben Dekhil, regional director, Bombardier Transportation.

Bombardier, in the event of bagging the project, would either go in for a joint venture with Gammon or resort to a sub-contractor agreement.

"It is too early too comment on the structure of the alliance and would depend on how the Dubai authorities want the project to be executed," said Dekhil.

The APM project would be executed in two phases, which will begin in 2006 and end in 2008. In fact, Bombardier had a similar alliance with Gammon for the Delhi Metro project and Singapore.

Dubailand will comprise of 45 mega projects and over 200 tourism, leisure and entertainment sub projects, making it the most ambitious tourist destination ever created.

On completion, Dubailand theme park will be twice the size of Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, making it the biggest theme park in the world.

The city of Arabia will occupy 20 million square feet (1.86 million square metres) and be home to over 35,000 residents. It will feature a huge shopping mall, a dinosaur theme park and residential and commercial towers.

The project will be ready for residential occupation by the end of 2007. The mall and the theme park will open together in the spring of 2008.

Interestingly, Bombardier has tied up with Reliance Energy to bid for the Rs 6,366 crore (Rs 63.66 billion) mass rapid transit system project in Hyderabad, while Gammon India is bidding for the same project as part of a consortium comprising GVK, Alstom and IDFC.

V Keshavdev in Milan
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