To develop high-speed rail between Milan and Venice in Italy’s industrial north presented a major challenge: most of the rail line follows the A4 highway, one of the country’s busiest toll roads. Arup was appointed as joint venture leader to set up the Project Management Office (PMO) for the Brescia to Padova sub-section of the toll road, ensuring highway operations, road safety and asset integrity weren’t affected by the high-speed rail construction.
With 11 different municipalities involved in the 30km stretch of highway-rail overlap, as well as 110 different infrastructure elements, communication with stakeholders including permits, highway management and the careful balancing of civil infrastructure works was the priority. Arup streamlined data management and built a culture of transparency amongst the many stakeholders through our PMO which extended beyond just this project.
A Project Management Office is becoming an increasingly common feature when it comes to managing complex, large scale infrastructure projects. Driven by a collaborative approach, Arup’s team has built a true in-depth partnership with the client. As a result, our work alongside the client has helped nurture a culture of excellence aligned with international best practice, supporting effective project management and quality delivery.
Programme and project management
Complex projects require a streamlined approach to data management, essential to track developments and keep a range of stakeholders updated. Building on previous appointments to support Abertis and Autostrada Brescia Verona Vicenza Padova on their digital transformation, our team has created a common data environment (CDE) as a central repository to manage all the data flows and deliverables, establishinga single source of truth for data. A range of dashboards allow the team to manage and visualise data, and to present it to the different stakeholders involved, providing visibility and accessibility as the project progresses.
We’ve also helped build internal capability, providing training on best practice to harness the dashboards and the data.
An out of the ordinary project, due to the complexity of the relationships, the number of teams and organizations involved, the variety of processes and the amount of information and transactions that cannot be lost. With Arup the pleasant feeling of control that is what the client is looking for.
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