Today, April 11, around 500 potential suppliers of the Rail Baltica project representing more than 300 companies from 24 countries across the globe are gathering in Tallinn for the Industry Suppliers’ Day – an international event that is part of RB RAIL AS organized Rail Baltica Global Forum 2018 devoted to the project’s implementation. The event is streamed live at the official event website www.railbaltica.org/forum.
The Industry Suppliers’ Day gathers companies from 24 countries, including the three Baltic states, in one place. Among participants are representatives of the construction industry, architecture and design, energetics, transportation, logistics and storage, IT and communications, manufacturing and production as well as other industries interested in the Rail Baltica project development considering potential growth opportunities for their businesses. A full list of participants is available at the official event website.
The Industry Suppliers’ Day is dedicated to the project’s procurement, giving detailed information about more than 70 procurements planned to be announced this year as part of the Rail Baltica Global Project in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Alongside the full procurement list for 2018, presentations on the Rail Baltica Design Guidelines, the main design tenders of the year as well as a vision on the BIM implementation will be given. Furthermore, this day of the Forum will facilitate networking among companies potentially interested to forge alliances for the upcoming tenders. Similarly to the experience in 2017, the suppliers had an opportunity to book a place at the Suppliers’ Meeting Point.
The Suppliers’ Day will start with an early bird panel discussion on professional workforce needs organised in cooperation with the Rail Baltica Business Network. The Baltic experts – Chairman of the Management Board Andres Trink (Merko Ehitus AS), Toomas Tamsar, Managing Director of the Estonian Employers’ Confederation, Kaspars Rokens, COO and Member of the Management Board of RB RAIL AS, Baiba Fromane, the Head of the Partnership (Latvian Construction Entrepreneur), and Ervinas Śkikunas, a representative of Civitta Lithuania – have been invited to share their vision on this topical issue for the Rail Baltica project implementation. It will be followed by a welcoming speech from the Chairperson of the Supervisory Board of RB RAIL AS Riia Sillave and a presentation by Baiba Rubesa, CEO and Chairperson of the Management Board of RB RAIL AS, providing an insight into the current progress of the project and its ambitions for this year. Kaspars Rokens, however, will discuss the role of the Rail Baltica studies in the project implementation and present the full procurement list of 2018, while Kristjan Piirsalu, the Head of Procurement of RB RAIL AS, will reveal the procurement lessons learned of RB RAIL AS.
The next working session of the Forum will emphasize the Design phase of the project giving detailed information on the Design Guidelines of the Rail Baltica Global Project and upcoming Railway Line Design tenders in 2018 and the next year. Agnis Driksna, Director of Development and Communication Department at Eiropas Dzelzceļa līnijas, and Anvar Salomets, Chief Technical Officer at Rail Baltic Estonia, will present the design tenders of the local facilities in Latvia and Estonia, while a more global perspective will be introduced by Kaido Zimmerman, the Head of Planning and Design Department of RB RAIL AS, Jean-Marc Bedmar, the Senior Engineer of RB RAIL AS, and Elodie Faivre, the Project Manager for Rail Baltica Design Guidelines preparation (SYSTRA S.A).
The third working session will address the topic “Rail Baltica – Digitalisation and Innovation opportunities” where international digitalisation and innovation experience as well as the latest trends will be considered with regards to the Baltic project by Carlo Borghini, Executive Director, (Shift2Rail), Kaspars Briškens, Business Development Manager (RB RAIL AS), Paulius Valiulis, Head of Innovation Laboratory (Lithuanian railways AB), and Javier Ibáñez de Yrigoyen, International Projects Directorate/Innovation Projects (ADIF).
As the BIM (Building Information Management) is going to be an essential element during the construction of Rail Baltica as well as within other phases of the project’s life cycle, the last working session will discuss the role of the BIM in the construction of transport infrastructure. Three experts – Raitis Bušmanis, the BIM Manager of RB RAIL AS, Risto Vahenurm, the Managing Director of Estonia Digital Construction alliance, and Simon Wray, the Infrastructure Lead of the BIM Institute (the United Kingdom) – will talk about the BIM vision for Rail Baltica along with the challenges and opportunities that it poses for the project.