Kuwait’s Public Authority for Housing Welfare has picked two Chinese companies to build supporting infrastructure for a Foster + Partners’ planned new city 80km south of the capital.

The work will mainly consist of road networks for the forthcoming South Sabah Al Ahmad City.

The 62-sq-km development will be formed of 10 neighbourhood clusters arranged around the city’s central business district and bordered by a ring of light industrial buildings.

China State Construction Engineering Corporation won a contract worth $300m to build and maintain roads for 7,623 residential units in four of these clusters.

The city will be based around a central business district that also contains a sports stadium, museum, university and park (Foster + Partners)

The second deal, for $260m, was closed by Sinohydro, which will build roads for 6,189 units in three clusters. The Chinese bids were the cheapest received.

The awards were announced by Amina Abdul Karim Al Awadhi, the authority’s deputy director general for oversight. He said the work would be completed by both companies within a period of 900 days.

Al Awadhi said the tender for the third and smallest infrastructure contract, dealing with the remaining residential plots, was on the table.

South Sabah Al-Ahmad City is set to be the urban core for the country’s southern sub-region. It will be home to an estimated 280,000 people, who will work some 145,000 jobs in industries including construction, medicine, manufacturing and culture.