King Salman International Airport Development Company has awarded an estimated SR800m ($213m) enabling and substructure contract for Terminal 6 to a joint venture of China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation and Mofarreh AlHarbi & Partners. The terminal is designed to add 40 million passengers of annual capacity and is targeted for delivery before Expo 2030 Riyadh.
The King Salman International Airport Development Company has awarded an estimated SR800m ($213m) contract for the enabling and substructure works on Terminal 6 in Riyadh to a joint venture of China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation and Dammam-based Mofarreh AlHarbi & Partners.
Terminal 6 carries most of the airport's near-term capacity increase. It is designed to add 40 million passengers a year and is targeted for delivery before Expo 2030 Riyadh, which makes it the single package on the site with the hardest external deadline attached to it.
What has been awarded is ground work rather than the building. Enabling and substructure packages cover site clearance, earthworks, excavation, piling, foundations and the buried services a terminal sits on, and they are let early precisely because they sit on the critical path of everything that follows. The main construction contract for Terminal 6 is a separate award; KSIADC shortlisted three groups for it in March. On a terminal of this size the substructure package typically runs a year or more ahead of the superstructure, so the practical significance of the award is that the terminal now has a start date on site rather than a design.
It follows the start of work on the airport's third runway. FCC Construcción and Al-Mabani General Contracting began construction on the 4,200-metre runway and its access taxiways, which have been laid out in line with Riyadh's prevailing wind patterns. The developer expects the runway, together with operational changes, to raise the airfield from 65 aircraft movements an hour to 85.
The runway contractors have also brought in CarbonCure Technologies to deploy carbon mineralisation in the concrete used on the runway, injecting captured carbon dioxide into the mix to cut its embodied carbon. Runway pavement is a large, repetitive concrete pour, which makes it one of the few places on an airport site where a change to the mix design produces a measurable result rather than a marginal one.
Two further packages are moving toward tender. KSIADC received prequalification statements from contractors on 1 July for a permanent east-west corridor across the site and for the landside access roads serving the airport's terminals. Those are the connections that determine whether a terminal opening on schedule is actually usable, and they tend to be the packages that decide whether an airport programme hits its date.
The sequence being followed at Riyadh is the standard one for rebuilding an airport that is already operating: airfield capacity first, then terminal substructure, then the landside corridors and roads. The airfield is in service throughout, which is why the third runway and its taxiways went ahead of the terminal packages rather than alongside them. Each phase has to be handed over without interrupting the movements the airport is already handling.
The contractor mix on the award is also worth noting. China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation is one of the larger Chinese state-owned infrastructure contractors and is working in joint venture with a Saudi partner, while the runway is being built by a Spanish contractor with a Saudi partner. KSIADC, a Public Investment Fund company, is spreading the work across international contractors paired with domestic firms rather than concentrating it, which limits exposure to any single supply chain but multiplies the interfaces the developer has to manage.
The wider programme runs well beyond the Expo date. Only some elements of King Salman International Airport are tied to 2030, with the full build-out extending into the following decade. What the Terminal 6 award establishes is that the terminal with the 2030 obligation attached to it is now moving from procurement into construction.