A notified body is an organisation, usually designated by an EU country, to assess the conformity of certain products before being placed on the market. These bodies carry out tasks related to conformity assessment procedures set out in the applicable legislation, when a third party is required. The European Commission publishes a list of such notified bodies.
RB Rail AS is planning to nominate a single NoBo service provider for the entire Rail Baltica line, throughout the design and construction phases of the project in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The selected NoBo provider will assess the Rail Baltica Global Project trackside infrastructure according to the requirements set in TSI as well as elaborate and issue relevant EC certificates of verification.
The key tasks of the NoBo service provider for the Rail Baltica Global Project include checking conformity of trackside infrastructure, energy subsystem, command and signalling with TSI requirements.
“Involvement of NoBo at an early stage of the project is an important step to ensure that Rail Baltica infrastructure, energy, control-command and signaling subsystems will be interoperable, function safely and uninterrupted. As an independent and accredited organisation, NoBo will provide a conformity assessment against the relevant requirements of the European Technical Specifications for Interoperability, which are necessary to launch the operations of Rail Baltica”, said Mart Nielsen, Chief Technical Officer of RB Rail AS.
The first stage of the procurement procedure includes the qualification of tenderers and is opened for the interested suppliers until 4 November 2019.
So far the Rail Baltica Global Project has firmly entered the design phase of the main line with design ongoing on nearly half of the main line, constituting 411 km, with an additional 233 km of design works being currently procured. In addition, two passenger terminals in Latvia - Riga Central Station and Riga International Airport are being designed by the national Implementing body.
Rail Baltica is a double track, European standard 1,435 mm gauge electrified railway for passenger and freight transport to be built from Tallinn to the Lithuanian-Polish border. The overall length of the railway will be 870 kilometers. The total cost of Rail Baltica in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia is estimated at around €5.8 billion with the first trains due to start rolling in 2025.
