In late November, the owner of a planned $11-billion, 1,200-kilometer freight and passenger rail complex across the United Arab Emirates announced with fanfare design and program management awards to three major international firms. But Abu Dhabi-based Union Railway Co. now is mum about why it suddenly dismissed the winners without any apparent explanation to the firms.
Union Railway last month terminated a joint venture of Parsons Corp., Pasadena, Calif., and Paris-based SYSTRA, awarded the project’s PM contract, as well as Parsons Brinckerhoff, New York City, which won the preliminary engineering contract for the project’s first two stages. The values of the contracts were not disclosed.