Title - Nod to begin bid process for monorail

KMCL board plan is to complete tender process in six months

The Kerala Monorail Corporation Limited (KMCL), the special purpose vehicle set up to execute the Rs.5,581-crore elevated mass rapid transit system in Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode, has given the green signal for commencing the bid process for the monorail.The nod, coming within five days of signing the general consultancy agreement with the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) on June 19, was given by the KMCL board that met here on Monday under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy.With this, the two-stage process — Request for Qualification and Request for Proposal — of commencing the tender process can be taken up. Official sources said the KMCL had already received the Request for Qualification document given by the DMRC. Following the KMCL board’s nod to commence the bid process, the RFQ can now be floated so that the process can be completed in three months. The Request for Proposal will be issued later and the attempt is to complete the tender process within six months and to finalise the contract in the next seven months to commence work.

The KMCL board also gave the permission to hold pre-bid meetings and to commence the functioning of the project offices in Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode.

Sources said the project office in the capital will be inaugurated near Raj Bhavan in the next 10 days. The project office in Kozhikode Collectorate is being furnished.

Global tenders will be floated by treating the two projects as one as only a combined distance of 36.4 km will be covered in the first phase. DMRC Principal Advisor E. Sreedharan has already said that the first stretch, where land acquisition was not needed, will be completed in three years.

A decision on including Mr. Sreedharan as a technical expert in the KMCL board has been kept in abeyance as the authorities are worried if there will be a conflict of interest. The board also gave the clearance for appointing the required staff in both the project offices.

Besides Mr. Chandy and Mr. Sreedharan, the meeting was attended by Ministers V.K. Ebrahim Kunju, K.M. Mani, V.S. Sivakumar, M.K. Muneer and Manjalamkuzhi Ali; Additional Chief Secretary Elias George; Secretary, Public Works Department, T.O. Sooraj; and KMCL managing director P.C. Harikesh.


Tenders to be floated by considering the two projects as one

Monorail offices in capital, Kozhikode