Astaldi wins Polish S7 contract between Naprawa and Skomielna Biala

1324 Astaldi, a global construction company based in Rome, has won a contract worth nearly €222 million for construction of Poland’s S7 dual carriageway between Naprawa and Skomielna Biala.

The contract, awarded by the 3519 Polish General Directorate for National Roads and Motorways (GDDKiA), includes construction of a 2km tunnel under the Lubon Maly massif, 38 bridges and viaducts and three motorway services. There will also be 25km of access roads and two junctions.

The north-south S7, when completed, will run 720km from Gdańsk on the Baltic coast through Elbląg, Warsaw, Radom, Kielce and Kraków to Rabka near Poland’s southern border with Slovakia. The vast majority of construction will be upgrading National Road 7 (DK 7).

The S7 is part of European route E 77, in turn part of the inter-European road system, starting in north-eastern Russia and running 1,690km through the Baltic Sea states, into Poland and connecting with central Europe.

Astaldi’s highways division has been particularly active in Turkey – the Mount Bolu Tunnel, the Izmit Bay Bridge and, in Istanbul, the Third Bosphorus Bridge.

Astaldi’s other infrastructure contracts includes metros in Milan, Genoa, Warsaw and in Caracas, Venezuela, as well as the high-profile Large Electron-Positron Collider for CERN, Switzerland.

Last year, Italian firm 7809 Salini Impregilo started construction of a 21.5km stretch of the S7 between the Jedrzejow and Checiny junctions under a deal worth nearly €144.67 million. Completion is set for the third quarter of 2017. Meanwhile, a consortium headed by 3302 Budimex won a contract worth nearly €318.28 million for the construction of a 9.7km section of the S7 between Ostroda Polnoc and Ostroda Poludnie.

In 2014, a 945 Strabag consortium, picked up a €127.93 million contract for a 4.5km section of the S7 dual carriageway near Krakow, including construction of a bridge over the Vistula River.

Astaldi announced last month that, as part of the Consortium ACe, it had won the design and construction contract for the dome and main structure of the European Extremely Large Telescope. The E-ELT will be built in Chile on the Cerro Armazones, in the central part of the Atacama desert, at 3,000m above sea level. Consortium ACe comprises Astaldi (65%, leader) and Cimolai (35%), with EIE Group, an international leader in management, design and production in the fields of astronomy and astrophysics.