The newly-completed Big Almaty Ring Road (BAKAD) creates a 66-kilometre bypass route at the junction of two international highways: the Khorgos-Almaty-Beshkek-Taraz-Shymkent-Tashkent road (the ‘Silk Way’ for short) and the Almaty-Karaganda-Astana-Petropavlovsk road (which lacks a snappier name).
The road is owned by the BAKAD public-private partnership (PPP).
The new road bypasses Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, running east-west around the city’s northern outskirts and around 25 kilometres from the city centre.
Starting this month, Egis will provide O&M services for the next 15 years, carrying out routine maintenance (including winter maintenance), free-flow toll collection (with no toll booths or gates), incident management, back-office support and asset management strategy.
Renaud Beziade, Egis’ chief executive (consulting & operations) said: “We are very grateful to our long-term partners in operating company BARR for their trust and for inviting us to work with them again on such an iconic project.
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“The ring road perfectly aligns with our corporate goals…it also features a free-flow tolling operation – one of our areas of expertise. We are already offering engineering services in Kazakhstan through a permanent office in Astana and so we can quickly scale up to deliver the infrastructure management services needed.”
The BAKAD PPP was set up on behalf of the Kazakh government in cooperation with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and International Finance Corporation as advisors.
The BAKAD consortium comprises Turkish contractors Makyol and Alarko, each with 33.3% and Korean firm SK Ecoplant with another 33.3% share, and Korean operator KEC with 0.1%.
The operating company BARR comprises Makyol and Alarko with 25% each, SK Ecoplant with 10% and KEC with 40%.
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