A joint venture of Salini Impregilo and Fincantieri raised the span in the presence of Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte and other ministers and officials. Also present were Salini Impregilo chief executive Pietro Salini, Fincantieri chief executive Giuseppe Bono and the managers, technicians and workers who worked on the project.
“Today, we celebrate an important day,” said Salini. He said that he remembered 14 August 2018, when everyone looked on in shock, feeling powerless at the sight of the collapse, which killed 43 people. He described it as being “an unimaginable and unacceptable tragedy for a country with our knowledge and our ability to build infrastructure still today with our hands”.
The PerGenova joint venture was awarded the contract in December 2018 (link opens in new tab).
“Now that we are in this pandemic that has denied us the pleasure of embracing each other, I would like to shake in a virtual way all the hands of the men and women who were able to build this bridge, because you are the extraordinary people who have closed a deep wound held by this city,” he said.
The final span, which is 44m in length and weighs 900 tonnes, was raised between Piers 11 and 12, bringing to an end to the fast-track project. The span was raised at 5m per hour by strand jacks installed on top of the piers, completing the deck’s total length of 1,067m. Work on the first foundation began on 24 June 2019.
“We are fully aware that the Covid-19 pandemic has forced us to rethink completely how we behave. It is an emergency that has unequivocally left its mark, splitting life in two, between the one that we had before it and the one that we will have after it,” said Salini. “In Genoa, we have shown that it is possible to work in safety thanks to the measures taken and the commitment of hundreds of people today on site.”
Lights in the colours of the Italian flag are lighting up the full length of the bridge and all 18 piers every evening until 1st May, in tribute to the public institutions, people of Genoa and victims of the bridge collapse.
The fast-track project has been documented using timelapse photography (link opens in new tab).
