Tender documents were due to be made available from 20 February, three weeks later than planned, for a design, build and operate concession for the $216M La Linea road tunnel in Colombia.
The scheme is being overseen by the country’s highways agency, Invias.
Bid documents cost $10,000 and details of these, plus other technical information are available on the Invias website.
Technical and financial offers for the construction and operation of the 8.6km long tunnel are due to be lodged in mid-August. Project director Juan de Dios Cisneros hopes to award the concession by the end of this year.
Prospective bidders must identify and agree sources of finance for the entire scheme, but the Colombian government will assume liability for these bank and other loans once it has identified a winning consortium.
The scheme includes a parallel emergency access tunnel, together with 3.8km of access roads. Completion is set for 60 months, after which the successful bidder will operate and maintain the tunnel for seven years.
The La Linea project forms part of the third generation of highway concessions that were launched almost two years ago. But delays to the projects occured because of problems with earlier concessions coupled with the country’s economic woes.
