The RB Rail AS joint venture said it has signed two-year contracts with two companies to provide temporary professional staff for the project, after holding a tender.
"The goal of this contract is to engage professional staff on a temporary basis for various engineering, project management, health, safety quality, and environmental positions. The contract value is EUR 5.5 million, which is calculated based on the planned workload for the next two years in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, and includes both the supplier’s and specialists’ salaries and related costs," said a RB Rail statement.
The companies in question are Linum Consult Ltd which is based near Manchester, England and is described as being "in partnership with Brunel Energy Europe BV" of the Netherlands, and another UK firm, EWI Recruitment, which is headquartered in London, the capital of England.
Briton Mark Loader, RB Rail AS Chief Program Officer said: “The need for short-term specialists is a common practice in large infrastructure projects in situations where specific one-off tasks are planned or a rapid increase in workload over a fixed period is expected. Also the selection of permanent staff for high-speed rail specialists in the Baltic States and elsewhere in Europe can take more than six months, which is why in such situations temporary specialists are involved to ensure continuous project progress and meet the deadlines.”
As previously reported by LSM, Rail Baltica is a flagship European Union project with the EU picking up 85% of the estimated 5.8 billion euro total cost and Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania picking up 5% each. Rail Baltica comes under the framework of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) funding instrument.
