Freight corridor project moves a step with the awarding of civil contracts
With the completion of most of the land acquisition statutory clearances and the award of civil contracts for 1,100 km for the Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC), project execution has actually begun.
There are two legs of the Eastern corridor covered in the 1,110 km— Mughalsarai-Sonnagar and Khurja-Kanpur — and Rewari to Palanpur on the Western side. Excavation and earthwork has already started on these sections.
Tendering progress
Tenders for another 1,260 km of civil works are in various stages of finalization. RK Gupta, Managing Director at DFC Corporation of India Ltd (DFCCIL), said, “We hope to invite bids and award contracts for these by December.”
Also, the tendering for systems contracts — covering electrical (laying overhead wires and substations) and signalling works — is under the process for around 2,200 km so that they could also be awarded this year.
Gupta further added, “Once civil contracts are awarded for a stretch, we want electrical and signaling, along with testing and commissioning of the line to be completed in four years’ time. There will be intermediate milestones for contractors within this four-year timeline.”
Thus, if the work of the electrical or signaling contractors is delayed because of the civil contractor, DFCCIL will penalize the latter to pay the compensation to the former. The penalties would be around 0.5 per cent of the contract value per month.
Constraints
With the absence of sufficient number of bids, especially in the Western corridor that is being funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the authority is facing constraints to award the contracts to suitable agencies. The JICA-funding norms stipulate involvement of a Japanese partner as the lead contractor even in civil contracts.
This has resulted in poor bidding, as not many Japanese firms are enthusiastic to enter the Indian civil construction market.
In one of the Western corridor civil contract — for a 322-km stretch between Iqbalgarh and Vadodara — awarding of the contract got delayed by eight months because there was only a single bidder for the project and the DFCCIL officials are not comfortable with it. In contrast, however, there has been no dearth of bidders for the Eastern corridor contracts.
On completion, the major part of the project is expected to go live by 2018 — the DFC plans to increase the freight capacity on trains, apart from reducing transit time for moving goods.
At present, the average speed of goods trains in India is about 25 km/hour. The main reason for it is that the passenger trains get the higher priority and they run on the same congested railway network. This is despite the freight generating two-thirds of the Indian Railways’ total revenues.
The DFC tracks will move only goods trains. That will make it possible for freight customers to also avail themselves of time-tabled services — a privilege now extended only to passenger trains. Train speeds are expected to go up three times as it would be fully automated signaling and no level-crossings.
HD Gujrati, Director-Operations and Business Development at DFCCI pointed out, “Also, not having to stop multiple times will lead to the trains consuming less fuel.”
Source: The Hindu BusinessLine
civil contracts, Dedicated Freight Corridor, DFC, DFC Corporation of India Ltd, DFCCIL, freight, goods trains, Iqbalgarh, Japan International Cooperation Agency, JICA, Khurja-Kanpur, Mughalsarai-Sonnagar, Palanpur, passenger trains, Rewari, Vadodara, Western corridor
