L&T set to win one of the largest civil works tenders for bullet train

Larsen & Toubro (L&T) is set to win one of the largest infrastructure tenders the country has seen.

It is likely to be the lowest bidder for the design and construction of civil works for 47 per cent of the alignment of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail corridor.

Three bidders, involving seven major infrastructural companies, had participated in competitive bidding.

The bidders other than L&T were the Afcons Infrastructure-IRCON International-JMC Projects India consortium, and the Tata Projects-NCC-J Kumar Infra Projects-HSR consortium. While L&T quoted Rs 24,985 crore for the 237-km stretch, the second-nearest bidder, the consortium led by Tata Projects, quoted around Rs 28,228 crore, said a source aware about the development.

If it gets the contract, this will be the biggest project won by L&T, which had the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link (MTHL), which was around Rs 8,000 crore, as one of the largest projects before.

“Financial bids for the design and construction of 237 km of the viaduct for 508 km of Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail corridor were opened on Monday and Larsen & Toubro is the lowest bidder,” said a statement by the National High Speed Rail Corporation (NHSRCL).

The technical bids for this tender were opened on September 23 and in less than one month the financial bids have also been opened after a rigorous evaluation of technical bids, it added.

This tender related to alignment between Vapi (Zaroli village at the Maharashtra-Gujarat border) and Vadodara in Gujarat. This includes four stations -- Vapi, Billimora, Surat, and Bharuch -- and Surat Depot. This entire section is in Gujarat, where more than 83 per cent of the land has been acquired for the project.

According to NHSRCL, which is responsible for implementing the high-speed project, the project alone will create more than 90,000 direct and indirect jobs during the construction phase.

Not just the employment market, the production and manufacturing markets are also expected to benefit from the project. It is estimated that close to 7.5 million tonnes of cement, 2.1 million tonnes of steel, and 140,000 tonnes of structural steel will be used in construction -- all of which will be produced in India.

In addition to this, large construction machinery is another market that gains. The current high-speed rail will cover 155.76 km in Maharashtra (7.04 km in Mumbai sub-urban, 39.66 km in Thane district, and 109.06 km in Palghar district), 4.3 km in the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, and 348.04 km in Gujarat.

This comes at a time when NHSRCL is working on seven new projects -- Delhi-Varanasi, Mumbai-Nagpur, Delhi-Ahmedabad, Chennai-Mysore, Delhi-Amritsar, Mumbai-Hyderabad, and Varanasi-Howrah -- at an expected cost of around Rs 10 trillion. For these, the Indian Railways is set to rope in private players to do it in a public-private partnership model.