Webuild, construction sites at full speed on the Bicocca-Catenanuova section

The Webuild sites for the Bicocca-Catenanuova railway section of the Palermo-Catania high-capacity line are running at full speed. In fact, work is underway in the open construction sites to connect the two main cities of the island through high-capacity railways and thanks to trains that will reach 200 km / h. Once again, the numbers explain the extent of the change. In the region there are 173 localities reached by the 1,369 kilometers of railway in operation. However, only 791 km (58% of the total) are electrified, and of these 223 are double track. Basically, most of the trains are forced to stop to allow the train arriving in the opposite direction to pass, thus delaying the time needed for even very short journeys by hours. The same happens today between Palermo and Catania, where trains travel at a maximum speed that does not exceed 90 km / h and are forced to stop from time to time precisely because of the single track (LISTEN TO THE PODCAST). Read also Hence the investment by Rete Ferroviaria Italiana which commissioned the Webuild Group to build the first section of the new high-capacity line, or the 38 kilometers that will connect Bicocca (near Catania airport) to Catenanuova (in the province of Enna) .The construction sites are running at full speed, without ever interrupting the activity of the old line, thanks also to the commitment of about 400 people who today work on the construction of the work. Dario Campisi is one of them. His role is that of technical coordinator or better – as he himself explains – “the person called to agree who designs with who realizes”. Campisi comes from Syracuse, about 90 kilometers from the site where he works today, but spent the last ten years building major works for Webuild in the Middle East, from the Doha Metro to the Maydan Mall in Dubai. “The added value that we Sicilians have – he says – is to take the best from other peoples and bring it to Sicily. And that’s exactly what I have tried to do in my working career”. This is also why his contribution to the Bicocca-Catenanuova shipyards is precious. But Campisi is not alone. In addition to the people involved in the construction sites, there are also more than 300 supplier companies (including suppliers and subcontractors), about 55% of which come from Sicily itself and to which approximately 92.5 million euros of works have already been assigned. In many cases, these are small and medium-sized enterprises, however capable of making a valuable innovative contribution. This is the case of the ‘Ponte GUIDO’, a patent of the company Natisone Lavori, which provides for the construction of a complex support system designed to allow acceleration of the railway line up to 80 km / h at certain points along the route. “Ponte GUIDO – explains the director of Natisone Lavori, Giuseppe Guidi – it is a railway homologation that comes from our constant attention to the transformations of the production reality in which we have fallen and therefore we want to always be in step with the times, with cutting-edge technologies and solutions in compliance with current regulations, the environment and safety in the workplace “. The innovative track support system is only one of the technologies applied to the construction of the new line, which is built with a deep attention to respect for the environment , precisely because it develops along the Catania countryside. This is the work of the Study Center of Economics Applied to Engineering, of which the University of Catania is a member, engaged in the application of remote sensing techniques that use high-resolution satellite images to map the area affected by the excavations and ensure that agricultural crops are not harmed. “The work – comments Michele Fabio Ruffo, project manager of the Bicocca-Catenanuova section – is carried out almost entirely on the surface, with the construction of viaducts up to 500 meters long that cross the waterways, the Simeto and the Buttaceto. complex and large-scale works, with earth movements for 1.5 million cubic meters and many small crossing works. All this while the traditional line continues to function “. The arrival of the double track in Sicily, but above all of the high railway capacity, is a first connection of the island with the rest of Europe along the Ten-T line that will connect Berlin to Palermo. A first step in waiting – who knows – that fast trains can run along the bridge over the Strait.