43 firms signify interest in bidding

Forty-three companies have expressed interest in joining the bidding for Phase 1 of the Clark International Airport New Passenger Terminal Building.

Seven of the companies, both local and foreign, have already purchased the bid documents for the Clark airport expansion project. These are China Harbor Engineering Co., Ltd; China State Construction Engineering Corp.; First Balfour, Inc. and Datem joint venture; Megawide-GMR joint venture; Jing-Qian Group Co., Ltd.; R-II Builders, Inc.; and Tokwing Construction Corp.

The remaining 36 companies are prospective bidders for the construction of the new passenger terminal building.

At the sidelines of the prebid conference Tuesday, Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) president and CEO Vivencio Dizon told reporters that the government plans to complete and commission the project by the first quarter of 2020. He hopes the groundbreaking can take place in December this year.

The new terminal project was designed to accommodate eight million more passengers annually, adding to the current capacity of 4.2 million -- bringing the total yearly capacity of Clark airport to 12.2 million passengers.

Total project cost for Phase 1 is around P12.55 billion.

The new Clark airport terminal is the first big-ticket project and the pioneer hybrid public-private partnership (PPP) model to be tendered under the Duterte administration, Dizon said.

Under this hybrid PPP model, the Philippine government will be funding the construction of the project, while giving the operations and maintenance (O&M) to the private sector.

Purchasing of bid documents is until Oct. 22, while the submission of bid documents has been set on Oct. 23.

In a separate interview, BCDA vice president for business development and operations Joshua Bingcang said the bidding will be composed of three documents -the eligibility documents, technical proposal, and bid submission.

Eligibility documents include the legal documents and technical experience of the company.

“They (bidders) will be subjected to qualification requirements. They should have completed at least PHP15-billion projects, one of which is an airport, an existing airport project. Then, they should have designed an airport which is actually built. And then, they have the network, at least the cost of the project,” said Bingcang. /