HYDERABAD: The Hyderabad Metro Rail Limited (HMR) has selected a Spanish consultancy firm, Eptisa Servicios de Ingenieria, through international competitive bidding as consultant on safety matters. Based on the combined technical and financial score, Eptisa Ingenieria with its quote of Rs 1.30 crore has been preferred to Bureau Veritas, a French consultancy firm, which quoted Rs 1.48 crore.
The selection was made by the HMR Tender Committee for Major Works headed by HMR managing director NVS Reddy. The other members of the committee are AP Road Development Corporation managing director B Rajagopal Reddy, HMDA chief engineer Madhwa Raj, APCPDCL chief general manager (finance) K Premananda Rao and HMR chief engineer Md Ziauddin.
The consultant will carry out safety audit of the designs, drawings, design basis reports (DBRs) and other documents prepared by the concessionaire, L&T Metro Rail Hyderabad Ltd (L&TMRHL), and its various consultants.
The safety aspects of the elevated viaduct (flyover-like structure on which tracks are laid), rail alignment, stations and other elevated structures and other components of the metro rail system will be audited by the consulting agency. The initial safety audit will be confined to the development (design) stage of the project and the recommendations made by the consultant will be incorporated into the designs by L&TMRHL under the technical supervision of Louis Berger, the project’s independent engineer.
This exercise will be completed in three months in parallel processing mode. Apart from a large number of international consultancy agencies working on the designs of different structures and components of the metro rail, L&TMRHL has also engaged UK-based Halcro as its internal safety assessor for carrying out independent safety checks.
In a related development, chief secretary and HMR chairman Pankaj Dwivedi reviewed the progress of designs and drawings and instructed L&TMRHL managing director VB Gadgil and HMR managing director NVS Reddy to expedite the design process and start pier construction on the 8-km-long Nagole-Mettuguda stretch.