Afcons Awarded Contract for Chennai Metro’s May Day Park – AG-DMS Section
As expected, Afcons Infrastructure has been awarded the contract to complete the balance tunneling work of the long delayed UAA-02 section of Chennai’s Metro between the May Day Park shaft and AG-DMS station! The Chennai Metro Rail Ltd. had initially invited bids for this critical section in August 2015, but didn’t follow through with awarding the contract to Afcons for “technical reasons“. After that, they invited separate bids for station and tunnel works in December 2015 for which L&T and Afcons emerged as the sole bidders respectively in April .
This 4.5 km section of the 32.10 km Wimco Nagar – Chennai Airport line starts at the May Day Park shaft, includes 3 stations at Government Estate, LIC, Thousand Lights and finally ends at the AG-DMS shaft. The original contractor of this package, a JV between Gammon-Mosmetrostroy, had abandoned tunneling work in May 2015 after completing only 1835m and 1700m of the 3616m long twin tunnels.
Alignment of UAA-02 between May Day Park & AG-DMS – view Chennai Metro map & information
Packages of Chennai Metro – view Chennai Metro map & information
The Gammon – Mosmetrostroy JV had also abandoned the UAA-03 section between AG-DMS & Saidapet, but luckily tunneling works were almost complete. Afcons Infra was temporarily roped in to complete the last breakthrough in September 2015 and L&T was tasked with completing the balance civil work at all stations which have been progressing satisfactorily – See: Chennai Metro’s April Newsletter.
As per a CMRL official who interviewed with The Hindu:
It was finalised last week soon after the elections. The tunnelling work has to be finished in 10 months. The work will start in a few weeks as man power has to be organised and the equipment have to be recommissioned.
Gammon-Mosmetrostroy’s subcontractors were recently allowed to remove their machinery, tools & other equipment, but their TBMs are still lying underground. With a tight deadline to complete pending works, Afcons will most probably utilize those TBMs to complete the balance works instead of removing them & lowering their own.
For more updates, check out the Chennai section of The Metro Rail Guy!
– TMRG
Hi,
The article states the contract on tunneling between mayday park and dms section. But what about the contract for completing the pending station works? Also what happened to the contract for the underground stretch between washermanpet to tondiarpet?
Thanks,
Subbu
@Subbu – Station contracts are assigned to L&T.
Thanks for the info!
I have always wondered, why don’t the authorities think along the lines of converting the Chennai MRTS into a metro line. Firstly it would increase coverage by about 30-40 kms of track that is ready made. I guess the conversion part would take probably around 2-3 years with all the station renovation works and rolling stock issues but after that 3 years as I said we would get additional 40km’s of metro coverage ( Whereas it took around 6 years to get a 10 km elevated line ready) . One of the reasons MRTS hasn’t clicked with the people is due to its poor maintenance of trains and improper utilization of stations. So why not give them a world-class makeover and see the result?
Hi, those are excellent points. Discussions to merge and bring both under a common organization have been underway for some time. In March, there was news about CMRL appointing a consultant to look into it, but I haven’t come across any notice inviting bids. Please see: Consultant soon for Chennai Metro-MRTS merger