On 17 August 2022, Rail Baltic Estonia, the national implementing body of the Rail Baltica project in Estonia, announced that Rizzani de Eccher S.p.A. submitted a bid for the construction procurement of the Ülemiste joint terminal by Rail Baltica, which almost doubled the expected construction cost of the construction procurement of the terminal and related infrastructure.
Within the provided deadline for the construction procurement of the Rail Baltica’s Ülemiste joint terminal and its surrounding area, only one offer was received from Rizzani de Eccher S.p.A., representing a consortium of international construction market participants.
“Considering the extensive impact of the war in Ukraine on the situation on the construction market and price levels, and the uncertainty of international bidders regarding our region, the lack of bids is quite expected. Of course, we hoped that there would be more offers and more people would be interested in participating in the construction of this landmark object,” said Rail Baltic Estonia COO Marko Kivila.
More than a twenty companies registered for the tender, and nearly 450 questions were asked during the tender procedure. “We are dealing with an extremely demanding and large-scale object, the construction of which is financed by EU funds, so in order to ensure the success of the procurement and mitigate the risks, we took a number of preventive steps both before the tender announcement and after taking into account the questions we received – we implemented cost indexation according to the change in the construction price index, shifted the project schedule, we simplified the documents and repeatedly postponed the procurement deadline at the request of potential bidders,” explained Kivila.
The cost of the tender submitted is 346 million euros, which is almost twice the total cost estimated before the procurement. “The procurement committee will continue with the procurement procedure in accordance with the rules of the procurement procedure, but considering the doubling of the cost, we are dealing with it in parallel with the preparation of other scenarios, i.e., a new procurement procedure. For example, there is a possibility to divide the procurement into parts,” explained the COO of RBE.
Rail Baltic Estonia announced the tender for the construction of the Rail Baltica Ülemiste joint terminal “Construction works of the passenger terminal, its surrounding area and railway infrastructure at the Rail Baltica Ülemiste station area” in the middle of March this year. The deadline for submission of bids was set for August 17, 2022.
The total volume of the Ülemiste public transport terminal building and its nearby working land is approximately 2.4 km². Along with the terminal, the railway infrastructure, the necessary access roads and streets, the town square ensuring passage under the railway, new tram and bus stops and parking areas will also be built.