LEADING contracting firm Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) beat competition from 14 local and international firms to win the deal for the sixth and final package of Oman’s Batinah Expressway project.

The contract, worth RO124 million ($322 million), is for a 45-km-long stretch of the 265-km long-highway. Other bidding firms included Larsen & Toubro, Sarooj Construction Company, Federici-Stirling Batco, Nagarjuna Construction, Ozkar Construction Company and Makyol Gulf.

The expressway will have four lanes on each side, in addition to interchanges, flyovers and underpasses, leading to different wilayats along the way, according to sources at the Ministry of Transport and Communication.

The sixth package will take a minimum of two years to complete.

The estimated RO1-billion ($2.597 billion) Batinah Expressway project is divided into six packages, several of which have been awarded. The first package linking Barka with Suwaiq was bagged by Galfar Engineering and the third package by Simplex Infrastructures. The second was recently retendered, after the ministry cancelled a contract awarded to a consortium of Malaysian construction firm WCT Engineering and Oman Roads Engineering Company.

For design purposes, the whole project is divided into three packages. US-based multinational consultant Parsons International designed the first and second sections of the carriageway, which together account for a 180-km section, while Turkey’s Bosphorous Technical Consulting Corporation (Botek) is providing the consultancy services for the remaining 85-km stretch of the road project.

The expressway is one of the biggest road projects in the country that extends Muscat Expressway all the way to the Oman-UAE border of Khatmat Malaha. Vital for developing the economic potential centred around the Sohar Industrial Port and special economic zone, the route is expected to reduce the travel time between Muscat and the UAE border at least by an hour.