The Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation ( BMRCL ) will award contracts for the 18-km Metro line on the outer ring road (ORR) only after studying the financial capacity of the lowest bidder.The BMRCL’s decision comes following ET’s August 7 report titled “Contracts Split to Speed up Namma Metro Work going to the Same Company?” Though the BMRCL is yet to open financial bids of all three packages, multiple sources said that one company has quoted lower than other construction firms in all three works for the ORR Metro Ajay Seth, BMRCL MD said the tenders for all 3 packages have several technical capacity criteria including “bid capacity” and “liquidity”. "The financial bids of participating companies having adequate bid capacity and liquidity and meeting other technical criteria only are opened," he said."After award of the contract for the first package, the balance bid capacity and liquidity of all the participating companies in the second tender packages shall be evaluated. The same process will apply to the third package. Therefore, the concerns regarding one company without capacity getting all three packages are overstated."In all, six firms — IL&FS Engineering and Construction Company, Nagarjuna Construction Company, Simplex Infrastructure, ITD Cementa-tion India, Sadbhav Engineering and JMC Projects — took part in the ORR tender. While Sadbhav was disqualified in the technical rounds, the remaining five companies are in the race. IL&FS emerged as the lowest bidder to construct the 7-km elevated Metro line between Central Silk Board and Bellandur, comprising of four Metro stations. The BMRCL, however, has not issued a letter of agreement (LoA). “Financial bids of two other packages are likely to be opened by the end of this month, it is learnt.Of the five companies that took part in the ORR Metro tender, the BMRCL has experience of working with companies such as IL&FS, NCC, Simplex and ITD, who are currently executing at least one Metro project of 72-km Phase II network. With four contracts, ITD Cementation India has bagged most number of works from BMRCL while Simplex has got two projects. IL&FS and NCC has got one each.The transport utility, however, is not happy with the performance of IL&FS and NCC who are the first ones to get contracts from Namma Metro. According to the agreements, both the companies were supposed to finish work on the Mysuru road (3.95-km) and Kanakapura road (6.52-km) by March 2018. The civil work, however, is expected to go on till mid-2019.Ajay Seth, BMRCL MD said the tenders for all 3 packages have several technical capacity criteria including “bid capacity” and “liquidity”. "The financial bids of participating companies having adequate bid capacity and liquidity and meeting other technical criteria only are opened," he said."After award of the contract for the first package, the balance bid capacity and liquidity of all the participating companies in the second tender packages shall be evaluated. The same process will apply to the third package. Therefore, the concerns regarding one company without capacity getting all three packages are overstated."