Saudi-based Al Fouzan Trading and General Construction Company (FTCO) has been selected by Bahrain's Arabian Gulf University to build the multi-million-dollar King Abdulla Medical City under a 30-month contract in the kingdom.

A specialist in the execution of medical city projects, hospitals, universities and educational institutions, Al Fouzan has several big developments under its name in Saudi Arabia.

These include the 500-bed King Abdullah Medical City in Makkah, King Saud Medical City in Riyadh, the 500-bed Prince Mohammad Bin Abdulaziz Hospital, besides residential accommodation for Al Jouf University staff and the 400-bed Maternity and Children Hospital in Makkah.

The Saudi contractor will be officially signing the deal for The King Abdulla Medical City project within the next few days.

The mega development, being funded by a $1-billion grant from the late Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, will come up over a sprawling one-million sq-m area near Askar which has been donated by His Majesty King Hamad, according to an earlier BNA report.

The hi-tech medical city will consist of a 288-bed medical centre that is in compliance with the highest international standards and specifications in this field.

It will also include a number of research and excellence centres, as well as a college of medicine, making it a comprehensive centre for medical education and medical services that would offer its services to patients from Bahrain and neighbouring GCC states, it stated.  

AGU has already roped in Saud Consult, which will be in charge of the engineering designs for the mega project, while the Ministry of Works, Municipalities Affairs and Urban Planning has been tasked with the implementation of the infrastructure works and facilities for the project.

The consultant will also follow up on the implementation of the infrastructure works as per the instructions of the Ministry of Works, Municipalities Affairs and Urban Planning, reported the BNA, citing a senior ministry official.

According to Ahmed Abdulaziz Al Khayat, the undersecretary of the ministry, the work on the medical city project will be implemented in four phases.

"The first phase includes the implementation of electricity, water and sewage networks, and fire-fighting, irrigation and rainwater drainage networks, that is in addition to the construction of internal roads and installation of street lighting," he explained.

The second phase will be the construction of a main power plant to supply the city with electricity, while the third and fourth phases will include the construction of a sewage plant and the development of the roads networks surrounding and leading to the city, he added.-TradeArabia News Service