The contract for the last remaining section of the Brenner Base Tunnel (BAT) has been awarded: the work on the “H53 Pfons-Brenner” section will be carried out at a total cost of €959 million by a consortium consisting of Porr Bau GmbH, Marti GmbH Austria and operated by Marti Tunnel AG Switzerland, the Brenner Base Tunnel Company (BBT SE) announced on Tuesday. It is the largest building plot in the Austrian project area.
Spicy: At the end of October 2020, the Brenner Base Tunnel Company canceled the contract for the largest building plot for the construction of the Brenner Base Tunnel, “Pfons-Brenner” (H51), with a volume of 966 million euros due to irreconcilable differences in content and technique. At the time, Porr was part of the consortium that would work on the building plot. Porr then threatened to sue millions. Efforts are still being made to clarify the termination of the contract amicably and out of court, BBT spokesman Andreas Ambrosi told the APA. You are on the right track in that regard.
Porr was the cheapest
The building site was eventually divided into a smaller and a larger part. The larger one now contains the lot “H53”. Why is the Porr Consortium being commissioned again? According to the spokesman, this was the technically and economically most favorable offer “taking into account all tender provisions”.
Construction work is expected to take about six years. The construction site “H53 Pfons-Brenner” consists of 25.2 kilometers of main tunnel, which will be constructed between the municipality of Pfons in Tyrol and the national border at the Brenner Pass. Those responsible emphasized that all tunneling plots for the Brenner base tunnel have now been awarded. In the meantime, of course, one has to deal with an increase in costs. The BBT had tendered the building plot in 2022 for 855 million euros.
Much ado about the Brenner Base Tunnel
So far, 157 kilometers of the 230 kilometer long tunnel system of the Brenner base tunnel have been excavated, of which 60 kilometers for the main tunnel. The BBT runs for 55 kilometers between Innsbruck and Fortezza in South Tyrol and is regarded as the heart of the new rail link from Munich to Verona. When completed, the Brenner Base Tunnel would be the longest rail tunnel in the world. The tunnel is also a core part of the TEN-T core network corridor Scandinavia-Mediterranean. The completion date has been pushed back in recent years and is now being announced for 2032. Cost estimates were most recently based on €9.57 billion. There was also constant criticism that too little was done with regard to the access roads, especially in the north.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
