Some 450 companies working on project so far with

Up to 4,000 to be employed for construction of entire project

• Work valued at €1.82 billion and part of construction of Verona-Padua high-speed/high-capacity railway already underway

• Railway will transport people and goods in a sustainable way along Turin-Milan-Venezia axis across northern Italy

• Webuild, with General Contractor Iricav Due, working on first lot of Verona-Bivio Vicenza section of railway at 35% already completed 

MILAN, July 27, 2023 – The Webuild Group, which leads General Contractor Iricav Due with an 83% stake, has signed with Rete Ferroviaria Italiana (infrastructure arm of FS Italiane Group) a €1.82-billion contract to start the executive design and work of the first so-called construction lot (“lotto costruttivo” in Italian) of a crossing at the junction of Vicenza as part of a new high-speed/high-capacity railway between Verona and Padua that is contributing to modernising transport in northern Italy. Webuild is already working on other lots of the railway with Iricav Due, which includes Hitachi Rail STS with 17%, and Lamaro Appalti and Fintecna as minority partners. 

The new lot will run for about 6.2 kilometres from the town of Altavilla Vicentina to the Vicenza Station. It will also include the renewal of 4.8 kilometres of the existing line. This will allow for an increase in high-speed, regional and freight transport services along the Milan-Venice route. It will guarantee a better separation of traffic flows, with a resulting increase in capacity and regularity of service, a reduction in travel times and an increase in train frequency. 

The Verona-Padua line, whose total length will be 76.5 kilometres, is subdivided into three lots. For the first between Verona and Bivio Vicenza (44.2 kilometres), work started in 2020 and has reached 35% completion. For the second related to the crossing at Vicenza, with today’s signing the executive design work and preliminary activities have begun. The third lot for the Vicenza-Padua section (more than 26 kilometres) is in the final design phase.

On all of the lots, Webuild is overseeing the design, monitoring the impact on the environment, and taking responsibility for the civil works and installation of the latest in technology. Hitachi Rail will bring the ERTMS digital signaling system, the most advanced in Europe that allows for more yet safer train traffic in order to make efficient use of rail networks.  

The railway will give a boost to Italy’s development. Its construction is expected to involve a workforce of up to 4,000 (direct and indirect), with approximately 450 companies along the supply chain already at work with contracts worth a total of more than €1.3 billion. 

When the line is finished, it will complete the connection between Milan and Venezia allowing people and goods to travel sustainably across the heart of one of Italy's most industrialised areas. Being a part of the Mediterranean Corridor of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T), it will bring Italy closer to the rest of Europe, strengthening the transport system in which the European Union is investing to allow interconnections and sustainable mobility to grow on the continent.

Webuild is a point of reference in the global sustainable mobility sector. It boasts a track record that comprises more than 14,100 kilometres of rail and metro lines. In Italy, it is working on some of the most important projects to strengthen high-speed/high-capacity rail transport, among which four lots of the Naples-Bari railway and seven lots of the Palermo-Catania-Messina route.