The Saudi Binladin Group (SBG) has been awarded a $3.73 billion (SR 14 billion) contract to design and build 30 parcels of land within Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD). The award was made on Wednesday by Rayadah Investment Company - the government investment arm in charge of developing the $10 billion project. Rayadah's KAFD project manager Waleed Aleisa said the fast-tracked contract requires SBG to complete 27 of the 30 parcels by March 2012 and the remaining three parcels by November 2012. “It's an enormous challenge and Binladin might be the only contractor in Saudi Arabia capable of producing 30 parcels in 38 months,” he told an industry magazine. “We didn't want to hire more than one contractor for the job because we wanted to reduce the complexity of the logistics and basically Binladin is the most qualified.” The contract includes construction of two of the tallest towers in KAFD - the 303m World Trade Centre and the 240m GCC Bank Tower - which will be among the last three parcels to be delivered. Alesia said around 70 percent of KAFD will be finished upon the completion of the contract with the remainder of land to be developed according to demand. KAFD is tipped to redefine Riyadh's central business district with more than 40 towers covering 1.6km2. Rayadah Investment previously awarded design and build contracts for the first 10 parcels last November as part of stage one of the development. SBG won four parcels while Saudi Construction, El Seif Engineering and Saudi Oger each won two. Stage one is scheduled for completion by mid-2011.
