The company responsible for the construction of the Solidarity Transport Hub (CPK), a flagship government project to create a new “mega airport” as well as road and rail connections, has signed an agreement for design work totalling 7 billion zloty (€1.5 billion).
The entities selected in the tender, which CPK says is “currently the largest framework agreement in Europe for this type of work”, comprise 11 consortia bringing together a total of 27 companies from Poland, Spain, France, Germany and South Korea.
Wśród wybranych w przetargu #CPK @STH_Poland podmiotów znalazło się 11 konsorcjów zrzeszających łącznie 27 firm projektowych z Polski🇵🇱, Hiszpanii🇪🇸, Francji🇫🇷, Niemiec🇩🇪 i Korei Południowej🇰🇷 https://t.co/D51sVkwT2S
— Centralny Port Komunikacyjny (@STH_Poland) July 27, 2022
The work carried out under the framework agreement will include preparing environmental decision paperwork, spatial planning, designs and studies for location decisions and property acquisition, construction designs for obtaining building permits, and detailed designs as well as documentation for selecting construction contractors.
The new contract is one of several framework agreements already being processed by CPK. In recent days, a contract has been concluded with contractors for preparatory work on the site of the planned hub, which will be located between the cities of Warsaw and Łódź.
On Monday, the company announced that it has selected and signed framework agreements with 20 contractors as part of a tender for railway investments. The estimated value of the orders is 2.5 billion zloty.
Source: CPK press pack
As part of the project, the company plans to build an airport and nearly 2,000 km of high-speed railway lines leading from 10 directions to CPK and Warsaw. The aim is to make it possible to get to the CPK from most cities in Poland in less than 2.5 hours.
The airport is expected to be built by 2027 and serve around 40 million passengers annually by 2035 in its first phase of operation, reaching 65 million by 2060, according to International Air Transport Association (IATA) estimates on behalf of CPK.
However, experts have expressed doubts about the feasibility of the 2027 opening date and the same concern has been raised by Poland’s state auditor, which in a report published in January this year said there is a high probability construction will not be completed by that deadline.
Some have also questioned the business case for building a major new hub airport, especially in the post-pandemic world. But the government argues that the project still makes economic sense and will function as a hub for air cargo in addition to passengers.
Planned mega-airport still makes sense despite new lower passenger forecasts, says Polish government
Main photo credit: CPK (press materials)
Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.
