Construction of a Metro Line Serving the Holy Sites of Makkah in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Each year, over the course of seven days around 3.5 millions pilgrims gather in Makkah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to perform one of the five pillars of the Islam, "El Hajj." The government (Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs) decided to equip the area with a metro line. SYSTRA was involved in the functional design, the result of which was an 18 km metro line with nine stations with line capacity of 72,000 passengers per hour per direction. The project was awarded as an Engineering, Procurement and Construction contract to CRCC (the Contractor), which decided to award the civil work design to SYSTRA (the Designer) and a local consulting firm. It was an eight-month fast track design where extensive use of prefabrication was the key.