China’s Shanxi Construction Engineering Group has won the bid to undertake the major airside and landside infrastructure improvement works at the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) after Spanish contractor Constructora Sanjose was sent off for non-performance.

The TIA air transport capacity enhancement project is scheduled to sign a contract with the Chinese company to undertake the ‘Package 1’ component on Sunday, said Babu Ram Poudel, chief of the project.

The works under this package include extending the southern end of the runway by 300 metres and building a drainage system, perimetre and access roads. The duration of ‘Package 1’ is 21 months.

Three international and a Nepali joint-venture construction firms—Shanxi Construction Engineering Group of China, China Railway 14 Bureau Group, STRABAG International GmbH of Germany and Kalika-Tundi—had been in the race for the ‘Package 1’ of the project.

According to Poudel, the ‘Package 2’ scheme that includes construction of international terminal building and associated works has already been awarded to a Nepali contractor under the national competitive bidding.

“Now, we have targeted to sign the contract of ‘Package 3’ component that includes construction of a sewage treatment system and installation of a power supply system within a month,” said Poudel.

Packages 2 and 3 will last 18 and 12 months respectively.

However, bidding for soil filling works on the northern side of the airport would take a few months due to the difficulty of finding a quarry site and transportation routes, the project said.

The soil filling works in the northern side of the airport where 12 international parking bays have been planned are the key components of the project.

The earlier project had been able to supply only 600,000 cubic metres of soil out of the 2 million cubic metres required for the expansion works. The project, therefore, has planned to invite separate bids for the soil filling works.

Sanjose and the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (Caan) had signed the contract for TIA Modernisation Project, now known as air transport capacity enhancement project, in December 2012 with the completion deadline set for March 2016. But Caan said adios to the Spanish company by officially issuing a ‘notice of termination’ on December 9, 2016 for delays. The termination of the contract became effective from December 27, 2016. In four years, the physical progress of the project was a meagre 17 percent. Subsequently, on July 12 the Public Procurement Monitoring Office (PPMO) had blacklisted the Spanish company for a period of two years.

In June, Caan invited bids to get the stalled project moving. It had broken up the project into four different packages that was undertaken by the Spanish company.

The completion date for the $92-million project has been pushed back to 2019. The project, jointly funded by the government ($12 million) and the Asian Development Bank ($80 million in loan and grant), hit a snag from the start as the soil to be used as filler for the expansion of the runway was not available. Work was held up for a few days after the airport was closed when a Turkish Airlines jet crash-landed in March 2015.

Subsequently, there were further delays due to the 2015 earthquakes and fuel shortages.

After the completion of the project, TIA will be able to handle more than 5.85 million passengers annually and accommodate bigger aircraft.