The Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV), the investor of Long Thanh International Airport in Dong Nai Province, southern Vietnam has proposed delaying the planned completion time of the essential facility component of the project until 2026 instead of 2025 as initially planned, as it needs an additional six months to complete the passenger terminal.

The airport project, including four components, will be the largest airport in Vietnam upon completion.

Package 5.10 to construct and install equipment at the passenger terminal of the airport belongs to the third component—essential facilities.

The ACV made the proposal in a statement sent to the Ministry of Transport.

According to the corporation, it asked the airport project management board to request the HAAA consulting consortium, including South Korea’s Heerim, the UK’s Arup, Australia’s Aurecon, and France’s ADPi, to review the construction time of package 5.10.

The requirement was based on the experience from the failure in holding a tender for the package and the proposals of contractors.

The consulting consortium later suggested that the passenger terminal be executed in 39 months, including 36 months of construction and six months of trial operation with three months of concurrent construction and trial operation.

The proposal was later verified by a consortium of Consultant & Inspection JSC of Construction Technology and Equipment, Vietnam National Construction Consultants Corporation, and the Institute of Construction Economics.

Following the proposal of the technical design consultant and the assessment of the verification consultant, the project management board agreed that the minimum construction time of 39 months for the passenger terminal is reasonable.

The ACV informed that bidding documents for the second tender were issued on January 19 and interested enterprises should not submit their bidding dossiers later than March 28.

To attract capable and experienced contractors for package 5.10, the ACV proposed adjusting the planned completion time of the third component to 2026.

Package 5.10, worth over VND35.2 trillion (US$1.5 billion), is the largest package of the passenger terminal in the first phase of the Long Thanh International Airport project.

In October last year, the ACV held a conference to invite tenders for the package but only one contractor submitted its bidding documents when the bid ended on November 8, 2022.

As a result, the time for the submission of bidding dossiers was extended to November 23, 2022 but all bidding dossiers failed to meet the requirements.

The ACV later decided to cancel the bidding.

In a document sent to the prime minister, the Vietnam Association of Construction Contractors stated that it is unfeasible to complete package 5.10 within 33 months, so it attracted a few contractors.

According to some foreign contractors involved in other projects in Vietnam, the workload of the Noi Bai International Airport expansion project in Hanoi is only one-third of that of Long Thanh International Airport but it needs 36 months for completion.

The Long Thanh International Airport project, located some 40 kilometers from Ho Chi Minh City, will cover around 5,000 hectares of land and was designed to have an annual capacity of 100 million passengers and five million tons of cargo. 

The under-construction airport project is expected to ease pressure on the overcrowded Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City.

The project needs an estimated investment of some VND336.63 trillion ($14.2 billion).

Of the total, VND114.45 trillion ($4.8 billion) will be poured into the first phase, in which a runway, a passenger terminal, and other supporting facilities will be developed to handle 25 million passengers and 1.2 million tons of cargo per year.

The phase was earlier expected to be completed in 2025 at the latest.

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