March 8 (SeeNews) - Municipally-owned Metropolitan, the operator of the Sofia subway, said on Friday that it has given local Trace Group Hold [BUL:T57] an additional 90 days to complete the construction of a station of Sofia's third subway line.
The deadline extension was prompted by the fact that in June 2018 the nearby Perlovska river overflowed its banks and flooded the construction site, which qualifies as a force majeure event, an additional agreement between the two companies, published by Metropolitan, shows.
Trace Group Hold suffered 367,339 levs ($210,600/187,800 euro) in damages to its equipment and construction materials as a result of the flooding.
A month earlier, in May 2018, a flooding of a nearby tunnel section during the construction works caused 690,454 levs in damages to Trace Group Hold.
In March 2018, state-owned National Railway Infrastructure Company informed Metropolitan that a planned link between the third line of the subway and the existing national railway infrastructure will not be possible, which effectively cut the scope of activities which Trace Group Hold needs to carry out under the contract.
As a result of all three events, the two parties agreed to cut the value of the contract for the construction of the subway station to 29.6 million levs from 29.8 million levs, both VAT exclusive.
Metropolitan and Trace Group Hold signed the contract in September 2016. Under the initial terms, the construction of the subway station should have been completed by the end of 2018.
Subway line 3 is planned to be 16 km long, with 19 stations. When completed, it will increase the total length of Sofia subway network to 56 km, with 53 stations.
Trace Group Hold's activities include rehabilitation, reconstruction and construction of roads, highways, airports, underground stations and underground railways, ground railroads and facilities, urban infrastructure and road marking.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)