Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport Co and the architects responsible for building a third terminal at the airport have offered better conditions to attract contractors to the project, which has stalled due to a lack of bidders.
In its latest briefing to contractors on Thursday, the company proposed adjustments to the bidding conditions for the construction of the building to address contractors’ concerns over the largest public infrastructure project undertaken in Taiwan since the 1970s.
The company has increased the project’s flexibility by offering bidders private consulting sessions and allowing them to propose other feasible ways to carry out the project based on construction capacity.
It also made public the budgets for separate construction items — which is uncommon in standard tendering, as normally only total budgets are released — to give bidders a better idea of the project’s parameters.
The revisions came after three unsuccessful tenders for the main terminal building project since last year, which led to a budget increase earlier this year from NT$74.7 billion (US$2.4 billion) to NT$78.9 billion, and an extension of the deadline from next year to 2023.
The company has tried to divide the work into smaller parts to make the tenders more appealing, but without success.
To ease concerns, it offered other financial incentives, such as cutting fines related to delays in bidders’ contract performance from 0.1 percent to 0.015 percent of the contracted price per day.
Taiwanese company CECI Engineering Consultants Inc, which has partnered with the British architectural firm Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners to design the new terminal, has said the team is willing to simplify the design as much as possible.
The team is also considering, although reluctantly, replacing the building’s signature ceiling — a wavy design dubbed “the cloud.”
“It would be a pity if the cloud is removed,” CECI executive Wei Yun-lu (魏雲魯) said, as it would cost NT$1.6 billion, or about 5 percent of the NT$34 billion civil engineering work.
Minister of Communications and Transportation Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) on Monday last week said that as the budget for the project was raised earlier this year, the company “should conduct a performance review to work toward changing the design.”
Wei said the team is willing to cooperate, but added that as more elements are removed, floor area would shrink and it would be difficult for the terminal to live up to expectations that it will turn the airport into a world-class aviation hub.
The British company was chosen in November 2015 as the architects for the project, which would increase the airport’s passenger capacity by up to 20 million annually, and work began in 2017.
Last year, passenger volume at the airport reached 46.5 million, far exceeding the 35 million passengers the two existing terminals were designed to handle.
The National Immigration Agency (NIA) said yesterday that it will revoke the dependent-based residence permit of a Chinese social media influencer who reportedly “openly advocated for [China’s] unification through military force” with Taiwan. The Chinese national, identified by her surname Liu (劉), will have her residence permit revoked in accordance with Article 14 of the “Measures for the permission of family- based residence, long-term residence and settlement of people from the Mainland Area in the Taiwan Area,” the NIA said in a news release. The agency explained it received reports that Liu made “unifying Taiwan through military force” statements on her online
A magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck off Taitung County at 1:09pm today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The hypocenter was 53km northeast of Taitung County Hall at a depth of 12.5km, CWA data showed. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Taitung County and Hualien County on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. The quake had an intensity of 3 in Nantou County, Chiayi County, Yunlin County, Kaohsiung and Tainan, the data showed. There were no immediate reports of damage following the quake.
Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) is to begin his one-year alternative military service tomorrow amid ongoing legal issues, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. Wang, who last month was released on bail of NT$150,000 (US$4,561) as he faces charges of allegedly attempting to evade military service and forging documents, has been ordered to report to Taipei Railway Station at 9am tomorrow, the Alternative Military Service Training and Management Center said. The 33-year-old would join about 1,300 other conscripts in the 263rd cohort of general alternative service for training at the Chenggong Ling camp in Taichung, a center official told reporters. Wang would first
MINOR DISRUPTION: The outage affected check-in and security screening, while passport control was done manually and runway operations continued unaffected The main departure hall and other parts of Terminal 2 at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport lost power on Tuesday, causing confusion among passengers before electricity was fully restored more than an hour later. The outage, the cause of which is still being investigated, began at about midday and affected parts of Terminal 2, including the check-in gates, the security screening area and some duty-free shops. Parts of the terminal immediately activated backup power sources, while others remained dark until power was restored in some of the affected areas starting at 12:23pm. Power was fully restored at 1:13pm. Taoyuan International Airport Corp said in a
RSS