A consortium comprising Spanish infrastructure developer Acciona Agua and y VINCI Construction Grands Projets has won a €200m ($223.3m) contract in Vietnam to build, operate and maintain the Nhieu Loc-Thi Nghe wastewater plant in Ho Chi Minh City.
As part of the contract, the consortium will design and build the phase 1 portion of the Nhieu Loc-Thi Nghe wastewater treatment plant, with a peak capacity of 34,000m³ per hour.
The design-build portion of the contract is expected to take five years to complete and will include the starting-up process and acceptance of works. The project also includes operating and maintaining the facility for a five-year period.
The contract was finalised by the World Bank and was signed in Ho Chi Minh City in March 2019. The project will include a pumping station, biological treatment, disinfection, sludge treatment, odour treatment as well as connection to the city’s sewage system.
The plant, which will treat wastewater from the Nhieu Loc-Thi Nghe Basin, is a crucial part of the city’s second environmental plan, benefiting more than a million residents.
Nearly 800 jobs are expected to be created during the peak construction period. Also, 25,000 hours of training are being planned to ensure safety of the labourers at the worksite and the completed structure’s quality at delivery, Acciona said.
Despite Vietnam being rich in water, the supply is problematic as weather and terrain affect the storage. As a result, infrastructure modernisation has been one of the core issues in water management policy in the country in recent times, and the wastewater plant is part of the process.
The Ho Chi Minh City wastewater plant is the first contract secured by Acciona in Vietnam, strengthening the company’s footprint in Southeast Asia.
Acciona first entered the region in 2016 when it secured a contract for the Putatan 2 brackish water potabilisation plant in Muntinlupa at the southern end of the Greater Manila district in the Philippines. The drinking water project serves nearly six million people.
The following year, Acciona secured a contract for a cable-stayed bridge in Cebu worth $400m.