July 2 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria's Road Infrastructure Agency (RIA) said that 14 candidates have placed bids in its tender for project design of a section of Hemus motorway 46 km in length heading eastwards from the junction with the Ruse-Veliko Tarnovo road to the city of Targovishte.
RIA has received seven offers for each of the two lots of the motorway section priced at 3.3 million levs ($1.9 million/1.7 million euro) and 3.4 million levs, respectively, RIA said in a statement on Monday.
Five companies running on their own and two consortiums have filed bids for the first lot with a length of 22,2 km - those are Trafik Holding, Via Plan, Iliya Burda, Putproekt - 2000 and Alve Consult along with a consortium comprising Project Planning and Management, EKJ Bulgaria Consulting Engineers and a consortium comprising Putproekt, Transconsult-22, Ruteks and Ingconsultproekt.
Ingkonsultproekt, Putproekt and Transconsult-22 are running on their own for the second lot of 24 km in length, along with four other tie-ups, comprising Ruteks, Controls; Via Plan, Alve Consult, Putproekt - 2000, Trafik Holding, Iliya Burda; EKJ Bulgaria Consulting Engineers, Portugal's Gabinete de Estruturas e Geotecnia; Siven Design Services and Italy-based 3TI Progetti Italia.
Winners in the tender must provide a project design and make a detailed engineering and geological survey of the sites where the new motorway section will be built. The assignment must be completed within 150 days.
In December 2018, the construction works were assigned to state-owned civil engineering company Avtomagistrali without a public procurement procedure. For this purpose, the company has been provided with 1.35 billion levs in funding by the government.
The 420-km long Hemus motorway is designed to link Sofia to Varna, on the Black Sea coast. A total of 170 km of the motorway have already been built.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)