Kuala Lumpur Monorail

Lea+Elliott provided professional services on the Kuala Lumpur Malaysia Monorail project in three separate efforts.

The initial phase of services was a due diligence review for a private investor from Hong Kong. It involved the review of the project plans at a relatively early stage of the project development to aid in the client’s decision to invest in this project, which was being undertaken along with the KL Linear City development as a 30-year concession agreement with the government of Malaysia. Critical reviews included: initial ridership forecasts; system design; system operations; capital and O&M cost estimates; revenue estimates; financial plan and feasibility and implementation plan; and schedule. A due diligence report on the monorail project was provided to the investor.

Subsequently, Lea+Elliott assisted the monorail concessionaire by reviewing turnkey suppliers proposals; performing value engineering studies; undertaking operational analyses; reviewing station and maintenance facility designs and recommending changes for operations, maintenance, cost, and passenger use and safety considerations; developing additional technical specifications and contract provisions; assisting in the negotiations with a Japanese consortium that was elected to be the turnkey system supplier; and participating in system and facility detailed design reviews. As a part of the initial design review activities, Lea+Elliott assessed a series of Hitachi straddle beam monorails in Japan with emphasis on the Tokyo monorail.

This project temporarily stopped after some of the infrastructure had been built, due to the Asian financial crisis. Contracts with the design-build and monorail equipment contractors were cancelled. It was restarted under Malaysian government control. The concessionaire developed its own monorail technology. Lea+Elliott was selected to be part of the Independent Checking Engineer (ICE) team for systems engineering and equipment aspects. This ICE work was for a bank that had provided a capital investment into the project. The client’s interest was to ensure appropriate technical oversight in support of protecting the investments previously made and further expanded by the bank on the order of $800 million Malaysian Ringgits.

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