OCI-VINCI-Arab Contractors alliance to complete $300mn barrage in Egypt

A joint venture comprising of French VINCI, Egyptian Arab Contractors and Orascom Construction Industries will finish works on new Assiut barrage project by September 2017.

The consortium was awarded US$ 450 million civil works package for the new barrage and 32 megawatt hydropower plant in Egypt’s Assiut in May 2012.

Arab Contractor’s chairman, Mohsen Salah said the project’s progress rate reached 60 percent of the total work volume. In addition, the consortium scope of work includes the construction of a new barrage across the Nile River, a 32 MW powerhouse, as well as an administration and other ancillary buildings.

The new barrage is built 400 metres downstream of an existing barrage and includes a sluiceway with eight 17-meter-wide radial gates, a hydropower plant with four 8 MW turbine-generators, a double-chamber ship lock of 120- by 17-meter chamber size, a road bridge, an 11-meter-tall embankment dam, and rehabilitation or replacement of the Ibrahimia canal head regulator.

A section of the Nile River is also being deepened in order to mitigate any potential increase in groundwater levels in Assiut city and neighboring areas namely Minya, Beni Suef, Giza and Faiyum.

The project is considered to be one of the country’s mega projects that is co-financed by the Egyptian Government and the German Development Bank.