Italian contractor Rizzani de Eccher is the only firm to respond to a tender issued by Rail Baltica to build the Ülemiste joint terminal in Tallinn, Estonia, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects.

And its bid of €346m is almost double what Rail Baltica expected the terminal’s construction cost to be, prompting it to consider re-tendering the 2.4-sq-km terminal project in separate parts.

Rail Baltica is the joint venture of Baltic states delivering an EU-financed, 870km passenger and freight rail corridor of the same name connecting Helsinki to Warsaw.

Twenty companies registered for the Ülemiste terminal tender.

Rail Baltica said it had streamlined the tender process to encourage bids by indexing costs to the construction price index, adjusting the project schedule, simplifying documents and delaying the bidder’s deadline.

Marko Kivila, Rail Baltica Estonia’s chief operations officer, said: “We are dealing with an extremely demanding and large-scale object, the construction of which is financed by EU funds, so in order to ensure the success of the procurement and mitigate the risks, we took a number of preventive steps both before the tender announcement and after.”

“The procurement committee will continue with the procurement procedure in accordance with the rules of the procurement procedure, but considering the doubling of the cost, we are dealing with it in parallel with the preparation of other scenarios, i.e., a new procurement procedure.”

In May, Rizzani de Eccher was selected by Rail Baltica to build the baltic states’ longest railway bridge, which will cross the river Neris near Jonava, Lithuania.

In 2020, it was reported that Rail Baltica is due to be €2bn over budget and four years behind schedule.

When completed, Rail Baltica will connect Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to other rail lines in Europe.