Consultants invited to bid for design of new overpass in city
Contractors have been invited to tender bids for the design of an overpass road in Nairobi after construction firm Strabag International’s contract was terminated.
Strabag’s Sh67 billion pay-for-use road, meant to ease traffic jams around Nairobi, was cancelled after the World Bank said it would only finance the project once the Austrian construction giant complied with social and environmental safeguards.
The Kenya National Highways Authority (Kenha) is searching for engineers to design the road as it prepares to award tenders for the construction work.
This sets the stage for a scramble for the project with Chinese and Japanese contractors being front runners.
“The selected firm must have demonstrable international experience in design of multi-carriageway urban motorways,” the authority said Wednesday, setting a September 17 deadline for submission of bids.
The planned overpass will run from Nairobi’s Likoni Road and Southern bypass junction and proceed along Mombasa Road, Uhuru Highway, Chiromo Road, and Waiyaki Way before joining James Gichuru Road to the west of the capital. The overpass is critical to unlocking benefits of the 12-lane Thika Highway that is expected to be completed and commissioned early next year.
Roads minister Franklin Bett said the planned road would have at least four inter-changes at strategic points such as Museum Hill round-about on Uhuru Highway, Westlands, and the area around City Cabanas restaurant on Mombasa Road.
“We intend to have a longer over-pass than earlier planned so that traffic that isn’t meant for the city centre is handed exclusive passage… we are looking at an extra seven to 15 kilometres of overpass road,” Mr Bett told the Business Daily.
He said the toll road concept would be dropped in the new design owing to lack of land for construction of ticketing booths.
“Unless a private investor comes up with a convincing proposal complete with sufficient land for the erection of ticket booths, the toll concept remains out of question,” he said.
“Currently, there is no land left along the planned construction corridor and the idea of a toll concept would not be viable.”
The fate of the overpass project has remained in limbo since early this year after the government pulled out of a public-private partnership that would have seen the road built on a toll concept.
Strabag had been eyeing a deal to implement the project but parted ways with the government even before signing a job contract.
Environmental safeguards
The fallout followed a condition by the World Bank that it would only finance the project once Strabag complied with its social and environmental safeguards, including land acquisition and Kenyan legal provisions.
According to the shelved blueprint the project, dubbed Nairobi Toll Road, would have entailed paving a 77-kilometre overpass between the Athi River Junction on Mombasa Road and Kikuyu on the Naivasha Highway on a concession arrangement.
Mr Bett said though Strabag missed an opportunity to build the toll road, it was welcome to bid for the new job.
http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Corporate+News/Consultants+invited+to+bid+for+design+of+new+overpass+in+city/-/539550/1220718/-/item/1/-/72tpboz/-/index.html
Seems they are reviving the project:banana::banana: