Consider special mechanism, bring Vietnamese consultants to participate in high-speed railway project

Considering a specific mechanism to facilitate Vietnamese consulting enterprises to participate in the North-South high-speed railway project is considered necessary, contributing to ensuring independence, objectivity, and cost control in accordance with domestic conditions.

4 reasons to delegate work to domestic consultants

In 2024, great joy came to the Transport Engineering Design Corporation (TEDI) when the high-speed railway project (HSR) on the North-South axis - TEDI project directly participated in the research and participated in the construction of the official pre-feasibility report was approved by the National Assembly for investment policy.

Perspective of the North-South high-speed railway project (AI photo).

Recognizing the opportunities in the project, Mr. Pham Huu Son, Chairman of the Board of Directors of TEDI, said that the new type of infrastructure has relatively new technology and techniques. However, infrastructure projects (bridges, tunnels, civil works, etc.) have high technical requirements, but basically domestic consulting units can undertake them.

The experience accumulated in the process of implementing design consulting services and construction of large infrastructure projects such as: North-South Expressway East, Nhat Tan Bridge, My Thuan 2 Bridge or Long Thanh International Airport... will support consulting to successfully implement the infrastructure items of the project.

According to Mr. Son, one of the requirements set by the Central Government is to promote self-reliance and mobilize domestic enterprises to participate in investment, construction, and project operation.

In that spirit, the project's pre-feasibility study report has assessed and proposed binding conditions for technology transfer and developed a development orientation for the railway industry until 2045 with four major goals: mastering the construction industry; domestic assembly and gradually localizing vehicles for national and urban railways; domestic production and gradually localizing hardware and software components for information, signals and power supply systems; mastering all operations, maintenance and repair work for high-speed railways.

To realize the above goal, the TEDI Chairman gave 4 reasons and said that it is necessary to consider creating maximum conditions for domestic consultants to implement the SDDC project.

Over the past 10 years, the unit has proactively built and developed a force of consulting engineers related to the railway sector.

Study tours to developed countries, short-term and long-term training courses, international document collection, construction technology research, structural comparison calculations, etc. have helped TEDI engineers improve their professional qualifications and update advanced technology in the world.

TEDI has also oriented to build specialized groups suitable for the railway sector's specialties such as: Infrastructure, equipment, vehicles, exploitation organization, operation and maintenance... From there, collect documents, research the standard system on survey, design, construction, acceptance and operation, establish standard frameworks, appropriate design orientations for each stage of project implementation .

Firstly, the DSTDC is a project using modern technology, deployed for the first time in Vietnam, it is necessary to research and select the type of technology suitable for the geographical morphology and transportation needs, both meeting the requirements of synchronization, modernity, and suitability with the development trend, while ensuring accessibility and mastery in operation and exploitation. The selection of the applicable standard system also needs to be taken into consideration.

This process cannot be separated from the role of domestic consultants to jointly study proposals, ensuring conformity with domestic conditions.

Second, Vietnam needs to take control of the construction part (accounting for about 75% of the construction and equipment value). Domestic consulting firms can mobilize more international experts to immediately carry out the survey, design, select the route and location of the works on the route, design the construction infrastructure, and promptly hand over the land acquisition and clearance scope so that localities can carry out the next tasks, meeting the project schedule.

Third, for the category of technology selection and transfer, the role of domestic consultants is as a partner and an effective bridge for domestic enterprises to receive the transfer. This has been specifically demonstrated for some leading countries such as: Korea, Thailand...

Fourth, the investment in the new DSTDC project is just the beginning, the operation and exploitation process will follow us in the future. The Government's strategy is to move towards complete mastery of the operation and exploitation process.

"Thus, domestic consultants play an important role in implementing the SDDC project, being the leading force in receiving, mastering and transferring to domestic units to successfully implement the project, ensuring independence, objectivity, and cost control suitable to Vietnam's conditions," Mr. Pham Huu Son shared.

Looking at two projects: My Thuan 1 Bridge Project and My Thuan 2 Bridge Project. If previously, My Thuan 1 Bridge was designed and constructed by foreigners, the investment rate was about 5,000 USD/m2, then with My Thuan 2 Bridge, which was completely implemented by a team of Vietnamese engineers and workers in all stages, the investment rate was only about 2,400 USD/m2. The government and management agencies can trust the ability of domestic enterprises to receive, master the design, construction, and optimize project construction costs.

Mr. Pham Huu Son, Chairman of TEDI Board of Directors

Two models to choose from

From a professional analysis perspective, TEDI leaders believe that the selection of project research consultants can be implemented according to two models.

Model 1 is a consulting consortium including international and domestic consultants. In which, the international consultant leads the consortium, and the domestic consultant is a member implementing the work items according to the agreement.

Implementing this model will select international consultants with capacity and experience to implement the project. However, the time to select international consultants will be longer; flexibility in consulting and handling urgent tasks is limited.

Model 2 is a consulting consortium including international and domestic consultants. In which, the domestic consultant leading the consortium can mobilize additional key personnel positions which are international experts.

With this model, a number of international experts will be mobilized, working under the direct management of domestic consulting enterprises, ensuring flexibility in solving work, good management of costs and technology. However, to ensure the feasibility of this model, it requires policy mechanisms such as allowing the use of experience and capacity according to similar project levels, assessing the financial capacity of the entire consortium or not considering it.

Bringing domestic construction enterprises into the SDDC project is considered to ensure the transfer process, moving towards technology autonomy (Photo AI).

Consider the specific mechanism

Identifying the North-South Expressway project with a basic construction value of about 33 billion USD as a great opportunity for Vietnamese businesses and contractors, on December 18, 2024, Mr. Nguyen Quoc Hiep, Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Construction Contractors, signed a document requesting the Prime Minister to consider a series of special mechanisms for the North-South Expressway project.

Paying special attention to contractor selection, VACC proposed that competent authorities study and allow the application of designated bidding in the project and apply a 5% discount.

The criteria for selecting domestic contractors with capacity and experience are contractors with capacity and experience; having participated in projects and traffic works with a rank (according to the classification of construction works prescribed in Circular 06/2021/TT-BXD) equivalent to the rank of high-speed railway lines or with a rank converted from at least 3 works at adjacent lower levels.

Regarding the criteria for selecting financial capacity, it is allowed to add up the financial capacity of all contractors in the consortium and can reduce the requirement on financial capacity.

The incentive model is a joint venture between domestic or domestic and foreign contractors, but the domestic contractor acts as the head of the joint venture. Bonus points are given to the contractor joint venture that uses domestic contractors for a larger proportion of the work.

In case foreign contractors want to participate, they must form a joint venture with Vietnamese contractors, in which Vietnamese contractors must undertake at least 50% of the work volume. Consider adding regulations on using Vietnamese labor, giving priority to local labor (at least 70%).

Regarding the consulting force, according to VACC, the project uses the FEED design process and EPC contractor bidding.

Because the consulting contractor force in our country is still thin, it is necessary to consider allowing consulting contractors participating in the feasibility study and FEED design steps to still participate in the EPC general contractor consortium to bid if they can prove their legal and financial independence from the construction contractor members in the EPC general contractor consortium, or allow the EPC contractor to choose the design consultant after winning the bid.

Regarding supervision consultancy and technical standards used, due to the reason that the project has high technical requirements, especially requiring high precision and limited tolerance, VACC proposed to strengthen supervision consultancy in the form of foreign consultants joining forces with domestic consultants for implementation.

During the construction and construction supervision process, the foreign side is required to transfer construction technology to the Vietnamese contractor.

Source: https://www.baogiaothong.vn/xem-xet-co-che-dac-thu-dua-tu-van-viet-nam-tham-gia-du-an-duong-sat-toc-do-cao-192241221132241232.htm