EPM awards contract to complete Hidroituango works

Colombian construction firm Schrader Camargo and Chinese partner Yellow River have been awarded a contract to complete construction work at Colombia's Hidroituango dam, project owner Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM) said on Wednesday. 

The value of the contract is 1.075tn pesos (US$260mn) and the deadline for the completion of works is 1,125 calendar days, or just over three years, EPM said in a statement.  

"We are very clear about the work that needs to be done because we have studied it for the past year and a half. The project is in good hands," Schrader Camargo general manager Andrés Canela told BNamericas. 

"We are very proud to be a part of Hidroituango's construction. It's one of the most important infrastructure developments in the country and demonstrates the capacity of Colombian engineering."

The announcement came five weeks after EPM said two of the three bids that passed the pre-qualification stage for the contract were declared void.

Italian firm Todini Costruzioni Generali failed to comply with bank guarantee requirements while China Gezhouba Group was rejected for rules related to bid bonds and insurance, according to tender documents published by EPM. 

The only eligible bid came from the Schrader Camargo-Yellow River consortium, known as CyS.

The companies were participants in the Ituango PC-SC consortium – along with Power China Internacional – that presented the only bid in a previous tender for the works. The proposal was declared void because the companies were deemed to have lacked the necessary experience. 

In April, EPM launched a new tender for the project with revamped rules, including a provision that allowed companies in a consortium to accredit their experience jointly under certain conditions.

CyS will be responsible for civil construction work on units 5 to 8 of the project, which will double its installed capacity to 2.4GW.

The project's first two turbines began operating last December and two more units are slated to come online later this year.  

Hidroituango has faced a series of construction problems that first became apparent when an auxiliary tunnel collapsed in April 2018, eight months before the plant was due to begin operating. 

BNamericas understands that the overall cost of the project is expected to reach 18tn pesos (around US$4bn) in a best-case scenario, representing an overrun of around 7tn pesos on its original budget.