MILAN, January 13, 2021 – Fifteen months of construction. Four hundred and fifty days which saw workers persevere through extraordinary events such as the COVID-19 pandemic to complete the Genova San Giorgio Bridge across the Polcevera riverbed and return to the city a strategic piece of its road network that supports an average of 43,200 vehicle journeys a day.

The bridge, whose completion was celebrated on August 3, 2020 with Italian President Sergio Mattarella, represents what many have come to call the “Genova Model”, a new way of building infrastructure whose efficiency of execution is based on several key factors.

The first is collaboration – among the companies that built the bridge, starting with the Webuild Group, as well as the public institutions, workers’ unions and residents. All these interested parties worked together towards the same objective, overcoming any delays, especially bureaucratic, that might have arisen in order to allow the builders to focus on erecting the bridge.

The second factor is transparency, which opened the project to the public. Webcams located throughout the construction site allowed online viewers to follow its activities day and night. A public installation about the project at Porto Vecchio in the historic district welcomed students from the city’s schools to learn about what was to become their bridge.

Teamwork between the contractor and the supply chain is the third. More than 330 suppliers and sub-suppliers from every region of Italy worked alongside Webuild - small- and medium-sized businesses whose expertise helped achieve the shared objective.

At the peak of the construction activity, more than 1,000 workers including engineers and technicians worked round the clock for months, braving rain, snow, wind and the COVID-19 pandemic with the strictest safety measures to achieve a record in the construction of public works in Italy – a record obtained thanks to collaboration, transparency, teamwork, safety… factors that make up the Genoa Model.