Salini Impregilo to lead Texas high-speed civil works

Texas Central, the developer of a project to build a privately-funded high-speed line between Dallas and Houston, has signed a limited notice to proceed (LNTP) with Salini Impregilo to serve as the lead contractor in the project’s civil construction consortium.

The 390km line will link the Dallas/Fort Worth area with Houston in around 90 minutes, with trains serving a single intermediate station in the Brazos valley. Private investors will finance the entire project and no federal or state support will be sought for construction, operation or maintenance.

As the lead of the civil construction consortium, Salini Impregilo – operating in the US market with The Lane Construction Consortium – will be responsible for all work up to the top of the rail, including viaducts, embankments and drainage. Under the LNTP agreement, the project’s design-build participants will proceed with the front-end engineering and design of the line’s civil infrastructure. Other services include optimising execution approaches, strategies and logistics, as well as performing analysis to develop construction costs and schedule estimates.

This work will form the basis for the development of a design-build contract that will be used to complete the civil infrastructure programme. This is a precursor to financial close, after which construction of the civil infrastructure will begin.

“Salini Impregilo’s knowledge and experience in designing, building and leading large scale railway projects across the world is impressive, and its presence in the US market with Lane is also strategic for the project,” says Texas Central CEO, Mr Carlos F Aguilar. “Their inclusion in the consortium highlights the stature of the Texas project and the interest of global infrastructure companies to be part of America’s first high-speed train.”

“This is a wonderful opportunity for us,” says Mr Pietro Salini, CEO of the Salini Impregilo Group. “We are delighted to be invited to take part to bring high-speed train service to Texas, as we have in Italy and other countries. It is precisely the kind of large, complex infrastructure project in which we have decades of experience. The United States is now our biggest single market, with a consolidated presence in highways, bridges and tunnels, and we are pursuing the high-speed rail sector.”

Source: railjournal.com