A consortium consisting of Austria’s Strabag and the Italian contractors Salini Impregilo, Consorzio Co-operative Costruzioni and Collini Lavori has won a contract to build an underpass beneath the Isarco River in the southern Alps.Â
The work makes up the southern segment of the 64km Brenner Base Tunnel megaproject, the longest railway tunnel in the world, and the main element in a new rail link between Munich and Verona.
The work includes two 4.3km tunnels and two 2.3km tunnels that will connect with the existing railway line. As well as the Isarco River, the main tunnels and the interconnecting tunnels will pass beneath the Verona-Brenner railway line, the A22 motorway and the SS12 state motorway.
Excavation is scheduled to begin this year and will take eight years to complete. The win for Salini Impregilo and Strabag comes a month after they were officially awarded the $516m contract for the Tulfes-Pfons section near Innsbruck in Austria.
It was announced earlier this year that Strabag will have a share of the Copenhagen metro project. Salini last December won a contract to build a skytrain in Australia.
