Systra-led consortium picked as Airport Metro consultant

HYDERABAD: An engineering consultancy consortium comprising Systra, RITES and DB Engineering has been selected as the General Consultants (GC) for the Airport Metro Rail project. Systra is a major engineering consultancy group from France, while RITES is a PSU of Indian Railways and DB belongs to Germany. In an open competition in which five international consortia competed, the Systra-led consortium emerged the winner.

The consortium only got the highest technical score for its credentials, but gave the lowest financial quote of Rs 98.54 crore to provide engineering consultancy services, according to NVS Reddy, MD of HAML. He indicated that this consortium will deploy 18 experts of different railway engineering disciplines and about 70 senior and field engineering personnel during the construction of Airport Metro.

Based on the recommendations of a technical committee, which evaluated the capabilities, experience and competence of the five consortia which participated in the tender, a high-level committee consisting of Special Chief Secretary (Finance) K Ramakrishna Rao, Metropolitan Commissioner, HMDA Arvind Kumar and NVS Reddy has selected the Systra-led consortium as the GC for the Airport Metro.

The immediate task of the GC is to prepare Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) tender documents for selecting the contractor for the Airport Metro, NVS Reddy added.