More than two dozen top design consultants have been short-listed by the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corp to bid for seven preliminary engineering contracts on the controversial $75 billion Western Corridor Railway.
The firms, including Maunsell Consultants, Halcrow, Ove Arup and Meinhardt, are Hong Kong subsidiaries of international companies.
Nearly half of the 25 individual companies have British parents.
One company, Sir Alexander Gibb, may already have to pull out because it is working on the government's independent project review.
Gibb has been selected in a joint venture with Harris & Sutherland to bid for the western section, but government rules ban companies involved in its assessment from participating in the corporation's tenders.
The deals are the first of more than 25 packages that will come out to tender for the project, known as West Rail. The corporation has also renamed the engineering work technical studies.
