The overall
budget for Riyadh
subway is more than
16.3 billion euro
FCC, the Citizen Services Group, has
achieved a new milestone in internatio-
nal construction. The company has been
awarded one of the contracts to build the
Riyadh metro (Saudi Arabia), which has an
estimated budget of over 16.3 billion euro,
i.e. 2.5 times the cost of the Medina-Mecca
railway. This is the largest international con-
tract in the history of construction in which
a Spanish company has been awarded a
contract. The consortium headed by FCC
will build lines 4, 5 and 6 of the subway; the
contract is worth 6.070 billion euro.
FCC’s main consortium partners are Korean
company Samsung and French company
Alstom. The other members are Strukton
(The Netherlands), Freyssinet Saudi Arabia,
Typsa (Spain) and Setec (France). The pro-
ject is to be executed in 5 years, and will
employ 15,000 people.
The Arriyadh Development Authority (ADA)
has awarded the FCC-led consortium one
of three contracts to build the Riyadh me-
tro, the longest subway system under de-
velopment in the world (176 kilometres).
The contract includes the design and
construction of lines 4 (orange), 5 (yellow)
and 6 (purple), which will have 25 stations.
Construction will include 64.6 kilometres of
rail track: 29.8 kilometres of viaducts, 26.6
kilometres of underground track, and 8.2
kilometres of overground track.
Juan Béjar, Vice-President and CEO of
FCC: “This award accredits Spanish com-
panies’ international reputation in infras-
tructure, specifically that of FCC, whose re-
ferences were decisive in successfully this
contract”. He added: “The Riyadh subway
dovetails with FCC’s new international stra-
tegy in construction, which is focused on
infrastructure and on countries where we
can best leverage our capabilities”.
The Riyadh subway is one of the largest
public works projects in the world at pre-
sent. The process commenced in July
2012, when 37 consortia comprising world
leaders in construction, rolling stock and
railway systems presented expressions of
interest. Only four of these candidates were
pre-qualified: those headed by Siemens
with Vinci, Bombardier with OHL, and An-
saldo with Strabag.
The consortium headed by FCC will use
three tunnel boring machines (TBM) to
build tunnels almost 10 metres in diameter
