MILAN, March 16, 2021 – The construction of the high-speed/high-capacity railway between Verona and Padua that will bolster sustainable mobility in northern Italy is starting to gather pace. This week, a qualification system for suppliers interested in bidding for €850 million worth of contracts goes online.

Known in Italian as the “Sistema di Qualificazione per Grandi Appalti”, this system is a new procedure stipulated by European Union directives to select partners for the IRICAV DUE Consortium, the general contractor of the project led by the Webuild Group that is planning and developing the railway. By posting public tenders on the Consortium’s website, this innovative system will bring greater transparency in the selection of suppliers for the development of the railway.

The system will facilitate the pre-selection of suppliers that could be then called upon to participate in a second round of a negotiated or limited selection process. The pre-selection will be conducted following the publication of calls for tender and related rules on the Consortium’s website, the Gazzetta Ufficiale (Official Gazette), and newspapers.

The first functional lot of the railway between Verona and Bivio di Vicenza is valued at about €2.5 billion, part of a combined investment of more than €2.7 billion by Rete Ferroviaria Italiana of Gruppo FS Italiane. It will run for 44.2 kilometres across 13 municipalities. By quadrupling the existing railway, it will improve the quality of the train service and strengthen its links to a European network, helping to reduce the impact on the environment as well as the number of road accidents. Signed in August, the contract foresees the work being completed in 2026. The investment being made on the entire length of the railway between Verona and Padua is estimated to be €4.8 billion and represents an important link across the country’s northeast. It serves as an example of how infrastructure can bring employment and foster economic revival. About 4,000 direct and indirect jobs are expected to be created.

The project, part of the high-speed/high-capacity railway between Milan and Venice, will belong to the Mediterranean Corridor that will link Spain and Ukraine. One of the strategic trans-European transport corridors (the so-called TEN-T core network), it will connect southwestern European countries with countries to the east. The Corridor will support traffic between Europe and Asia. In Europe, meanwhile, it will handle traffic between the southern and eastern regions. With the addition of the line between Milan and Venice to the national network, 75% of the Italian population will have access to high-speed rail service.

The first functional lot of the railway is one of a number of major projects in Italy being developed by the Group, including the Ionian Highway, Metro C in Roma, M4 metro line in Milan, a metro line in Naples, the Naples-Bari high-speed railway and the Sud-Est Barese di Monopoli-Fasano Hospital.