Hyderabad, Apr 20 (IANS): An engineering consultancy consortium consisting of Systra, RITES, and DB Engineering has been selected as the General Consultants (GC) for theAAHyderabad Airport Metro Rail project.

Systra is a major engineering consultancy group from France, while RITES is a PSU of Indian Railways and DB belongs to Germany.

In an open competition in which five international consortia competed, the Systra-led consortium became the winner. It not only got the highest technical score for its credentials, but gave the lowest financial quote of Rs 98.54 crore to provide engineering consultancy services, Hyderabad Airport Metro Ltd (HAML) Managing Director N.V.S. Reddy said.

He has indicated that this consortium will deploy 18 experts of different railway engineering disciplines and about 70 senior and field engineering personnel during the construction of Airport Metro.

Based on the recommendations of a technical committee which evaluated the capabilities, experience and competence of the five consortia which participated in the tender, a high level committee consisting of Special Chief Secretary, Finance, K. Ramakrishna Rao, Metropolitan Commissioner, HMDA Arvind Kumar and HAML MD Reddy has selected the Systra-led consortium as the GC for the Airport Metro.

The immediate task of the GC is to prepare EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) tender documents for selecting the contractor for the Airport Metro, added Reddy.

The 31-km long Metro will connect the Information Technology hub of Hitec City to Rajiv Gandhi International Airport at Shamshabad.

The foundation stone for the Airport Metro was was laid on December 9, 2022. The project will be built by the state government at a cost of Rs 6,250 crore