Chinese Consortium Faces Fines After Missing Deadline to Submit Bogotá Metro Designs

The Chinese consortium tasked with designing and building the Bogotá metro missed the May 5 deadline to deliver the designs and studies related to the project and will now likely face the fines threatened by Bogotá Mayor Claudia López until the group is able to submit the necessary documents.

The consortium, which is made up of the China Harbor Engineering Company Limited (CHEC) and Xi’an Metro Company Limited, is reported to be in compliance with 95% of the studies and designs needed for the project but missed the deadline largely due to incomplete document translations from Chinese, English, and French to Spanish. The group is also reportedly completing final documentation and technical adjustments to the project.

López and Leonidas Narváez, the manager of the Bogotá Metro Company, previously extended the deadline to May 5 after the consortium failed to deliver the studies and designs by the original March 30 deadline, warning the consortium that it will receive a daily fine of 50 monthly minimum wages, a standard multiplier used in Colombia when levying financial penalties.

“If, on May 5, the Metro Linea 1 consortium fails to comply again, we will initiate a sanction and fine process for noncompliance,” said Narváez when the city initially extended the deadline. “Every day that it is late in delivering the final studies and designs…the consortium will be subject to a daily fine of 50 minimum wages as of May 6.”

A construction site for the Bogota Metro on Calle 72 and Avenida Caracas. (Photo credit: Jared Wade, January 2023)

In the lead-up to the submission deadline, Luis Fernando Mejía, deputy director of the infrastructure sector, said during an interview with Blu Radio that the comptroller’s office believed that the consortium would be unable to meet the deadline.

Despite the expectation of another missed deadline and the resultant fines, López has been optimistic about the consortium’s ability to deliver the designs by June and said that the difference of a few weeks is unlikely to create delays for the project as a whole.

“[They] are doing well,” said López. “They always told us: ‘In all certainty, in June we are finished.’ They are making a big effort to finish in May. [These] are studies and designs of things that are going to start in two or three years, so that this does not delay the execution.”

López and Narváez have also stated that the construction of Metro Line 1 has been progressing steadily, with a general advance of 8.9% and a 20% completion overall, which includes the land purchase and the work on the workshop yard.