High-speed rail: Webuild's consortia halt the sites, and the State is the client, the shareholder and the payer of the furlough
18 October 2026, 18:23
In recent days around 500 workers on Italy's high-speed rail sites have been put on furlough under the state-backed wage-support scheme. They work for Seli Overseas, a Webuild group company, in the Terzo Valico tunnel between Piedmont and Genoa and on the Messina-Catania line. According to Il Post, the work was suspended by the consortia led by Webuild, Italy's largest construction company. The reason given to the unions: «unforeseen financial, administrative and contractual developments with Rfi», the Ferrovie dello Stato (Italian State Railways) company that commissioned the works. Webuild says €2.1 billion is needed shortly to complete the sites. Rfi replies that it has paid what it owed, and has ordered work to resume.
Who decides to halt a public works site? Article 121 of the public procurement code, Legislative Decree 36 of 2023, leaves it to the works director, for «special circumstances» that prevent work proceeding «to a workmanlike standard», and to the project manager, for «reasons of necessity or public interest». Both sit on the side of whoever pays for the work. A dispute over money is not among the listed reasons. In October the site was halted by the party that gets paid.
Behind the dispute are the reserves: the sums a contractor records in the site registers for variations, delays and price rises, and asks to be paid on top of the contract price. According to Rfi, on the works entrusted to Webuild's consortia they reach €20 billion, almost as much as the value of the contracts. For every ten euros of price won at tender, nearly nine more in claims. Webuild points out that these are neither receivables nor sums owed: they are what has been entered in the registers.
Some of the price rises may well be real. In the Terzo Valico the excavation hit gas in the rock, and the work slowed down. But in the meantime public money has already gone out. Rfi writes that, of the advances paid on the contracts, more than €4.8 billion remain «at the full disposal» of the company. The sites are being halted for less than half that sum.
Who decides what a reserve is worth? The technical advisory board, a panel of experts that the two parties appoint for each project. In July, on the reserves examined, the boards gave the contractor just under three euros for every ten claimed. At the same rate, Webuild's reserves would make the works cost about €5.6 billion more. Rfi would pay it, that is Ferrovie dello Stato, wholly owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. On major works the tender only sets the first price: the real one arrives once the site is open, and taxpayers pay it.
At the table, moreover, the State sits on both sides. Through Rfi it pays. Through Cassa depositi e prestiti, the state lender controlled by the same ministry, it owns about a sixth of Webuild, that is of the party asking for the money. And the workers sent home receive their furlough pay from a public body, INPS (Italian social security).
So the question, for Rfi and for the Ministry of Economy and Finance, owner of Ferrovie dello Stato: if the sites stay closed, what happens to the advances the contractor is still holding?
On the halted high-speed rail sites the State pays for the work, for the advances and also for the workers who cannot build it.
This article was prompted by a news item published in Il Post on 16 October 2026.