NHSRCL Invites GAD Bids for 2365 KM of High Speed Rail Lines
India’s National High-Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) on Monday night invited tenders for preparing general arrangement drawings (GADs) to develop Detailed Project Reports (DPRs) for 2365 km of new High-Speed Rail lines.
Details are a little sketchy right now as the tender’s basic scope doesn’t provide the exact corridors and the tender documents will become available to download later on Tuesday morning.
But looking at the 2365 Km figure, current status of all DPR-related tenders (see table below), and past survey and traffic study-related tenders, I’m pretty sure it refers to the following 4 lines:
- Delhi – Amritsar High Speed Rail (approx. 459 km)
- Mumbai – Hyderabad High Speed Rail (approx. 711 km)
- Chennai – Mysuru High Speed Rail (approx. 435 km)
- Varanasi – Howrah High Speed Rail (approx. 760 km)
Contract: NHSRCL/CO/CA/GAD/2021/06
Scope: Preparation of General Arrangement Drawings (GADs) of Crossing Bridges over Rivers/Canals/Railways and Roads (Expressway, NH , SH and Major District Roads) and GADs of proposed Stations and Maintenance Depots for Detailed Project Report (DPR) of various HSR Corridors (About 2365 kms long)
- Period of Work: 240 days
- Bid Submission End Date: 15-Apr-2021 03:00 PM
- Technical Bid Opening Date: 16-Apr-2021 03:00 PM
This GAD-related tender notice is significant as it’s the very last of 7 types of tenders for all new HSR lines. The other 6 tenders are related to surveys (data collection / utility identification), studies (traffic & ridership / SIA / EIA) and alignment design (LiDAR).
If you check out each line’s tender section linked below, you’ll notice all 6 others have either been awarded or are in the technical bid evaluation stage – just weeks away from being awarded.
Here’s a list of the winners or the current status for GAD preparation:
| Line | Contractor / Status |
| Delhi – Varanasi (865 km) | Translink Infrastructure Consultants Pvt. Ltd. |
| Delhi – Ahmedabad (886 km) | Aakar Abhinav Consultants Pvt. Ltd. |
| Mumbai – Nagpur (741 km) | Holtec Consulting Pvt. Ltd. |
| Delhi – Amritsar (459 km) | Bids Invited (this post!) |
| Mumbai – Hyderabad (711 km) | Bids Invited (this post!) |
| Chennai – Mysore (435 km) | Bids Invited (this post!) |
| Varanasi – Howrah (760 km) | Bids Invited (this post!) |
For more updates, check out my Home Page!
– TMRG
Does the GAD work happen after various surveys are completed (like lidar, utilities etc.)? Or it happens in parallel?
Great question. It’s going to happen in parallel and I imagine there’ll be some sort of coordination between different contractors.
A stage-1 preliminary route for each new line was identified in 2020 and all contractors are working along that route. Here’s the tender notice for that (not sure who had won it):
https://themetrorailguy.com/2020/02/12/nhsrcl-invites-design-survey-bids-for-6-hsr-lines-across-india/
I imagine too, since LiDAR survey is only a few 100 meters from either side of the tentative alignment – which means that the alignment has almost been finalized.. I imagine that these surveys are to gauge the kind of work required (and not to fix the alignment), which was my prior understanding..
How does NHSRCL draw a line on the map though, without even knowing what is there on the ground? Sounds a bit crazy..