14 Bidders for Gwalior – Lakhnadon Expressway’s DPR Consultant Contract

14 firms have submitted bids to prepare two Detailed Project Reports (DPR) for the construction of Gwalior – Lakhnadon Expressway after Ministry of Road Transport and Highways of India (MoRTH) opened technical bids on Tuesday.

This approximately 530 km long 4-6 lane greenfield access-controlled highway will have an alignment running through Madhya Pradesh (majority) and Uttar Pradesh. It aims to provide north-south expressway connectivity to ultimately link Agra and Bangalore.

This expressway’s alignment will pass through the cities of Jhansi and Sagar, and on the southern end terminate at Lakhnadon which sits at the intersection of NH-44 and NH-34 (old NH-7).

MoRTH had invited tenders to appoint consultants for its development in June 2024 with a 1.5 year deadline via 2 packages:

• Package 5: Gwalior – Jhansi – UP/MP Border (265 km)
• Package 6: UP/MP Border – Sagar – Lakhnadon (265 km)

MoRTH received a total of 27 bids – 14 for Package 5 and 13 for Package 6. Chaitanya Projects Consultancy was the only firm that put in 1 bid for Package 5. The rest bid for both packages.

Bidders

• Aarvee Associates Architects Engineers and Consultants Pvt. Ltd.
• AICONS Engineering Pvt. Ltd.
• Chaitanya Projects Consultancy Pvt. Ltd. – Package 5 Only
• Consulting Engineers Group Ltd.
• Egis India Consulting Engineers Pvt. Ltd.
• FP India Project Management Consultancy Services Pvt. Ltd.
• Highway Engineering Consultant
• LEA Associates South Asia Pvt. Ltd.
• Lion Engineering Consultants Private Limited
• Monarch Surveyors and Engineering Consultants Limited
• MSV International INC
• Pioneer Infra Consultants Pvt. Ltd.
• SA Infrastructure ConsuLtants Pvt. Ltd.
• Theme Engineering Services Pvt. Ltd.

MoRTH’s Brief Scope – Package 5: Consultancy Services for preparation of Detailed Project Report for Construction of 4/6 laned High Speed Corridor / Expressway between Gwalior – Jhansi – UP Border section of Agra – Morena – Gwalior – Jhansi – Sagar – Lakhnadon Corridor passing through

MoRTH’s Brief Scope – Package 6: Consultancy Services for preparation of Detailed Project Report for Construction of 4/6 laned High Speed Corridor / Expressway between UP Border- Sagar Lakhnadon section of Agra – Morena – Gwalior – Jhansi – Sagar – Lakhnadon Corridor passing

The bids have now been sent for technical bid evaluation which can take a couple months to complete. When that is done, the financial bids of the technically qualified bidders will be opened to reveal who’s the lowest bidder and most likely consultant for each package.

If a contract is awarded in the first half of 2025, we can expect the DPR to be finalized by 2026-end. It will then go through the motions of approval, land acquisition and other clearances – so at this time I see construction work starting no sooner than 2028.

Once operational, Gwalior – Lakhnadon Expressway is expected to reduce the travel time between both places to about 5 hours from the current 10 hour journey.

As shared at the top of my post, this expressway aims to ultimately provide high-speed north-south connectivity between Agra and Bangalore, or Katra and Chennai, if you will.

A DPR for Agra – Gwalior Expressway with an 88 km route has already been prepared, and tenders for construction were invited by National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) in December 2023 but were abruptly cancelled in January 2024. Bids were re-invited in January on DBFOT mode, and the current technical bid opening date is November 14. On the south-side, NHAI is currently in the process of appointing consultants to prepare DPRs for Nagpur – Hyderabad and Hyderabad – Bangalore expressways.

Gwalior – Lakhnadon Expressway (Packages 5 & 6) is part of a series of 5 new expressways (or “High Speed Corridors” as MoRTH now calls them) proposed for construction in India. Here’s a summary of all – click on the package number to see their bidder list:

• Kharagpur – Cuttack – Visakhapatnam Expressway (Packages 1 & 2)
• Jamnagar – Bhavnagar – Bharuch Expressway (Packages 3 & 4)
• Gwalior – Jhansi – Sagar – Lakhnadon Expressway (Packages 5 & 6)
• Bangalore – Mangalore Expressway (Package 7)
• Gangtok – Siliguri Expressway (Package 8)

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– TMRG