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Will Saudi Arabia's Massive Mega-Airport Gamble Really Pay Off? image

Will Saudi Arabia's Massive Mega-Airport Gamble Really Pay Off?

The Off Site Podcast
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45 Plays1 month ago

In this week’s episode, Jason and Carlos have three more pieces of construction and tech news to dig into.

The duo begin with the recent news of Mace’s accepted bid to develop Riyadh’s upcoming King Salman Airport; then they weigh in on a brand new subcontractor rating software named Trestle. Finally, they finish by discussing one of Europe’s biggest ongoing projects, the Lyon to Turin High-Speed Rail.

Follow Carlos on Linkedin | Follow Jason on Linkedin | Check out Aphex

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Transcript

Introduction and Topic Mix-Up

00:00:00
Speaker
Hi everyone, producer Olu here with a small announcement about this week's episode. Due to a last minute change of topics and my own forgetfulness in updating the introduction for this recording session, there is a little bit of confusion at the start of the episode regarding the topics that Jason and Carlos will be talking about. Usually I edit these mistakes out, however that wasn't possible in this particular case. I ask for your understanding and with that said I hope you enjoy the show.

Pronunciation Fun: Maryland

00:00:28
Speaker
um The other one is ah the collapsed Francis Scott Bridge in Maryland. Have you heard it called Maryland? How do you say it? Maryland.
00:00:40
Speaker
maryland no top not mur land That's a weird attraction at AR. That's a weird attraction at some creepy amusement park. I'm really hoping Oli cuts out but he won't.
00:01:00
Speaker
Q Q I of the tiger Low energy Friday need us to get into gear. I know Welcome back to the podcast. I think we go straight into it ah Carlos. How are you mate? Happy Friday?
00:01:18
Speaker
Happy Friday. I'm good, I'm good. couple of ah Couple of interesting projects for you on the news this week. yeah This is my weekly news roundup because otherwise all I see is Donald Trump memes. Yeah, or Keir Starmer. Yeah, it's ah it's not a good reading, but the construction news is way more interesting. I definitely don't get Keir Starmer news. What's Keir Starmer up to? You can bring me up to speed on that one as well. So you can't sell any more projects. he's He's releasing Prisoners and everyone's kicking off about it.
00:01:47
Speaker
that what That might make the like reduce the cost of labour. Yeah, that's true. Right, two two projects for you.

Rail Line Developments: Etihad in Jordan

00:01:55
Speaker
um First one, Etihad Rail from the UAE has got an agreement to build a two and a half billion rail line in Jordan.
00:02:03
Speaker
Okay. it it is It looked like it was like, I don't know, 50 to 100 miles in length. And it's basically transporting phosphate from a mining facility to the production facility. Someone listening to this is Googling where's Jordan now, but definitely not me. yeah So that the line basically runs along the Israeli Jordan yu border, ah north to south. um Yeah, okay.
00:02:27
Speaker
so like pretty heavy freight 16 million tons a year they're like the fifth biggest phosphate producer in the world it's going to start in 2026 and take four years connecting to like shipping channels then Well, I think it actually, it it goes from mine to facility where they refine it. I think it's phosphate, it's like agriculture and fertiliser and stuff like that, largely. Something in there, let's not be too specific. Yeah. Yeah. yeah I think it's also like plastic and all sorts. Anyway, I didn't go hard into that because, so yeah, quite a big project. Yeah, Eddie had round up on that. The other one is... I'm presuming that's the same Eddie had as Eddie had the airline.
00:03:04
Speaker
ah Well, I think it's just basically a state country. So Ettie had Abu Dhabi and they've got Ettie had brands all over the place. So there's Ettie had the airline, Ettie had rail. I think it's basically, I'm going to be called out by like a hundred people for saying this, but it will be owned by like The Shake or the The State. Like an Adani or something in India. Yeah, yeah exactly. It's like the quasi, like we're not connected, but we are connected sort of set up.

Maryland Bridge Collapse and Rebuild

00:03:32
Speaker
yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not the one making all the money. It's for the state, but I am. um The other one is ah the collapsed Francis Scott Bridge in Maryland. he Never heard it called Maryland. How do you say it? Maryland. Maryland. Not Maryland. That's a weird attraction at AR. That's a weird attraction at some creepy yeah amusement park. I'm really hoping Ollie cuts out but he won't. Francis Scott Bridge. No, he can slow it down. He can drag the Marriott even further.
00:04:08
Speaker
the So yeah, Keywit have been chosen to replace the bridge. Yeah, the interesting thing was 73 million. That bridge was massive. It seems like quite cheap, but I guess... Which bridge? which bridge This isn't the bridge that collapsed. Really? The big steel one.
00:04:27
Speaker
Yeah, wow. 73 million. I don't know much about bridges, but that seems pretty good. Isn't that the one wasn't it? Wasn't there was a, was still in Baltimore, the one that they like put back in like two weeks or something.
00:04:40
Speaker
Yeah, that, yeah, that was a different one, but this one like collapsed onto a ship. Yeah, right. So it's quite, it looks like quite a major bridge. So I was just thinking, I couldn't find any information on this. So I'm just wrong. But I was thinking maybe they've just done it at cost or something like that, because it's a rebuild of a collapsed structure. It's like a good thing to do.
00:04:56
Speaker
but like guess Yeah, okay. Like an introductory offer type thing. Pro bono. yeah So, yeah, anyway. I doubt it, um but it could be.
00:05:12
Speaker
I like to think there's some good in the industry. It's it's probably like a buy one, get two, three type of thing. ah Yeah. If you need this, you have to give us this contract. Yeah. yeah ah Very good. No, there's ah like could hear there's more projects coming around the world. And I guess maybe let's dive into the topics that we're going to cover this week. So first off, we're going to kick off with the news that Mace has won a bid to develop the King Salman International airport, which is intended to be the biggest, or one of the biggest, let's just go with the biggest airport ever. Next, we're going to dive into a new tool slash platform designed to minimize the variability and the stress around finding the right subcontractor and vendor called Tressel. And then finally, we're going to look at the EU and the big transport development plans, specifically Poland's plans for 1.4 billion of new rail projects. That doesn't feel like the right topic that ah producer Oliver has put there. We're actually going to talk about the Leon Turin rail line instead. So late change to programming.
00:06:28
Speaker
yeah No, that's good. We all make errors and sometimes we read out the errors live in a podcast. So let's just quick change, see if we can slide that in. He will cut

Saudi Vision 2030: Airport and Economy

00:06:41
Speaker
that part. Yeah, sure. It's like this guy will read anything that's on the teleprompter. It's the Anchorman.
00:06:51
Speaker
Ah, so let's go. the This airport, this is the most interesting topic that we're talking about today for me. This airport is absolutely massive. So a few weeks ago, MACE, ah the UK, I guess it's a it's ah it's ah a bit of a conglomerate. They have kind of like a consulting division and a construction division, but they were awarded a delivery partner role.
00:07:13
Speaker
on this this airport in Riyadh. It is its forms part of the Saudi Arabia Vision 2030 scheme. It's planned to make up an area of 57 square kilometres and plans to be able to handle 120 million passengers annually by 2030, which is like in infrastructure development timelines, like the day after tomorrow.
00:07:38
Speaker
and And they're expecting for that to increase to almost 200 million people by 2050. Karth, that's a big project. Thoughts? That is a big project. Yeah, so um it's hard to imagine what 57 square kilometers is, but there's six parallel runways. Have we done the how many football fields that is? I haven't this time. I think I've mentioned that like six times in the last two episodes.
00:08:04
Speaker
The six parallel runways, there one of their big sort of marketing lines is ah Saudi Arabia is within eight hours flight time of 70% of the world in terms of population. So like Dubai is a massive travel hub, planes are actually going through and taking off again rather than sort of just pure tourist destination.
00:08:24
Speaker
yeah This all plays part of this bet that they're actually going to be a hub. like At the moment, there's no Saudi airline that's based in Saudi Arabia that everyone uses to get yeah international flights. I guess I'm looking forward to the big reveal of this airline that's going to bring all these people in because there's no way they're going to do that sort of traffic for people visiting the country unless we're all wrong about Neil and every other project and their ability to pull people in. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. If you compare it to other major airports,
00:08:53
Speaker
They said they'll do 120 tomorrow and 185 million in 2050. The day after, yep. Yeah. And if you look at other airports, the biggest is Atlanta 107. And then you've got like Beijing, Dubai, LA, Tokyo, the be the major ones.
00:09:10
Speaker
and there was weigh on Yeah, that's if you base it in like passenger traffic. I prefer to magic manage measure it in runways. Chicago Air International Airport's got eight runnies. Although they're not all parallel, so there's some crisscrossing runways. But six is up there. Yeah, but also like the top ten are countries that people like have massive tourist industry. So that's the part I can't work out at the moment.
00:09:35
Speaker
because there isn't a big tourist industry in Saudi Arabia. And the whole vision is one massive bet that it all works. Yeah, they just have to do it. Well, the time I guess the clock's ticking on the like switch off of oil or the switch to the economy.
00:09:53
Speaker
they they can't They can't do it over 300 years like another country might have. But yeah, it's ah they they had announced, I think it was the last year or the year before, a new national carrier ah airline. So the plan is to do airport and new airline and be this travel hub. But that if you've heard that story before, that's the exact same pitch from like a UAE.
00:10:21
Speaker
And so we now have like, there's like four of these, like people going people countries or regions going, you know, we're within seven hours travel of, you know, 80% of the world's population or whatever. So they're literally directly competing. So they are, they announced in March 23, Riyadh air, uh, it's going to be based at the, that airport, um, and have its first flight in 2025. is the the plan. And I guess classic Saudi style, ah this new startup airline, Riyadh Air, has placed an initial order for 72, 787s. So just just starting with a small fleet of 72 jumbo jets.
00:11:04
Speaker
It just killed killed my research by giving me all the details and the thing that I hoped to see. Yeah, that's um yeah okay so that makes sense. Yeah, the um I guess it's super interesting that obviously the goal is to diversify away from this oil economy. yeah The investment is happening simultaneously at a massive scale in stimulating all sorts of economies, building entirely new cities, building all this infrastructure. And it all has to kind of like magically come together. yeah ah I guess you think about how like things happen organically and then things that are kind of like artificially stimulated. And yeah, this is definitely on the non-organic growth um path. that match is which ah Yeah, go go right.
00:11:52
Speaker
One of the big reasons the UAE worked is ah they they've gone quite sort of west and they're less extreme in their laws and everything that comes with it from a cultural point of view. So it'll be interesting to see if they can maintain the principles that they live by and Saudi and achieve this world destination. um So I think that's the thing that is struggling to get my head around. Yeah, will they go down the same path?
00:12:13
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going to steer clear of that. I'm going to steer clear, I'm going to dodge that. Anyway, let's focus on engineering. One thing that sort of immediately jumped out is we've got six runways. Oh, Olu, 8,000 football pitches. Thank you. So we've got 8,000 football pitches worth of like, basically tarmac and structures on sand. Sand kind of acts like water. This is a QS. The slides when you're construction adjacent, um you make comments like sand kind of acts like water. Yeah, I'm gonna cut back to Jason in two lines time. But I was thinking that must be quite difficult. I looked into ah Dubai Airport, which is obviously another very large airport built on sand.
00:12:59
Speaker
and they had to have this combination of these, they call them ground improvement techniques, I'm not going into that, but very deep piles across the entire footprint. 8,000 football pitches of deep piles sounds like a huge challenge, but yeah, do you have any experience of building structures on sand?
00:13:16
Speaker
You'd have to know more about the actual geography at the site. But first of all, reality is fairly inland. So the comment about sand acting like water, that's true in Dubai where you've got water and sand and it gets that plasticity to it.
00:13:34
Speaker
Um, this is like inland, so this is much more like sand acts like sand. The interesting, I guess for the apron, um, and the runway. So the apron is like the, the bit of tarmac that is not the runway, but where planes like park and scoot around and whatever, I'd guess they'd just be, it'd be acting like a big floating slab thing. They're not going to, they're not going to pile or well, who knows what they're doing.
00:14:01
Speaker
there's all all sorts of things they might might be doing and I'd just be totally guessing like they could be doing that kind of like grout you know you mix it in you do that kind of like grout injection or you like mix the soil back in with cement and there's all sorts of things that people might be doing okay but um yeah sand without water is definitely better than sand with water as a starting point yeah but also what's interesting is like how As a strategy for the country, it's like also a big bet that like there's all these projects in Riyadh. They're basing the national carrier in Riyadh. I don't know if you've seen some of the... you know We've been through in previous episodes these lists of mega projects all based around Riyadh. And at the same time, there's that this NEOM investment.
00:14:50
Speaker
which is nowhere near and that needs its own airport. I don't know if I was playing the game of SimCity build a country from scratch really quickly. I don't know that I would start in two different places at the same time, but yeah this is where I now say stupid things um outside of my lane.
00:15:12
Speaker
so Yeah, what do you reckon? I don't know. I'm probably oversimplifying it and combine that with a lack of understanding and knowledge on the whole thing. But if you're running out of oil and that's your primary source of income, there's not many other cards to play. So if you're going to play it, play it big, maybe it's the mindset. So you did yeah, the the investors, there's big bickies. That is for sure.
00:15:34
Speaker
Cool. now i think I definitely think it would be good to have even more as someone that has to do that commute occasionally that goes through one of those hubs. I definitely like the idea of some more competition. I hope they take like the Uber strategy of when they launch in the market, they do it at like crazy cheap prices. The ability to to commute from say Oz to the UK cheaper would be lovely. Yeah, 100%. Cool. No, awesome project. And obviously a big win for for MACE as well. Yeah, MACE have some decent contracts. They seem to be doing well in the Middle East. So they're quite involved in the, they were involved in the Red Sea projects or are involved in the Red Sea projects. And there's a few others too. So seems to be working well for them. And they're quite a well-regarded brand over there.
00:16:20
Speaker
Cool. Changing tact away from speculating about airports in other countries. We are looking at this startup named Tressel that's looking to have a crack at something that you've talked about about 420 times on the podcast, which is like vendor risk management. So at its core Tressel's goal is to improve the process of finding and managing subcontractors through the use of like pre-qualification and profiles and reviews about each of the subcontractors history and performance, and then through through this pre-qualification system.
00:16:54
Speaker
that they meet the sort of standards before they're engaged. I feel like every time we've talked about procurement or commercial improvements on projects, ah your number one thing is like vendor assessments and risk and what if this vendors, what have they done on previous projects, et cetera, et cetera. So i'm I'm imagining you're excited. Yeah.
00:17:18
Speaker
Yeah, I think the first thing I need to call out is, you know, ah we've we've called out a few niche carving exercises, but they're the most advanced AI powered vendor pre full of qualification platform for heavy construction. Which is another nice statement. um gotta You got to give yourself a nice little hill to walk up ah rather.
00:17:43
Speaker
Yeah, no i yeah the the app looks really cool. A little gripe that I have is there's no video content. It's really hard to see anything of depth. It's just you're strictly a video learner. Don't make me read stuff. yeah reading Reading, yeah, it's tough. But um no, they seem to have a very strong gear towards the profile sort of community aspect of things. um But if you think back to projects, understanding how contractors perform is really difficult. Some contractors have the sort of centralized very high level scoring systems based on performance reviews that are done on site and the performance reviews are always great because it's a package manager working with the subby and they're going to be naturally biased unless they're having a terrible time. And then what what most people end up doing is it's the view from the
00:18:34
Speaker
really the agent, the construction manager of the PM on that subcontractor from a previous job, which is heavily biased too. So this idea that we have real scored metrics across the supply chain to help guide you towards um selecting the right contractor um and that community aspect looks really strong. And it's not just like a loose, this is rated four and a half out of five.
00:19:00
Speaker
It has information like total contracts that have been awarded, the value, the average value, the creep. So lots of contractors get onto sites with a one million pound contract and leave with

Innovative Platforms: Tressel

00:19:10
Speaker
10. That's a big red flag. Looking at actual contract performance, not just like someone's view on whether they were nice is a good step in the right direction. Can I ask you, so I guess also for context, they recently raised to two and a half or 2.3 million in like early stage pre-seed funding. So this is, it's still, it's very early, they're just yeah getting rolling. Do you think that this is a a tool, like an internal, a SAS platform that's trying to be that internal knowledge base of ratings?
00:19:45
Speaker
Is this kind of trying to be kind of like a G2 or like an Uber scoring system across the industry? you ah you wouldn't They probably don't share, again, a video would help this. They probably don't share the contract information outside of your contractor. Yeah. Like contract value, maybe. Unless they anonymize it all, then maybe it could work. Yeah. um But it seems like it's a it's a real community. Like you can see how they're performing everywhere and they're building up a profile and then you're rewarded for being a great supply chain member.
00:20:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's what I got the sense as well to be kind of like this G2 for construction vendors. What's interesting is how valuable that like I'm thinking about how do they make money. I'm imagining and it looks like they might charge a fee to access that kind of network to the people writing the contracts.
00:20:39
Speaker
ye As someone that's been in that space, how valuable would you view this kind of aggregated, anonymized rating system across other contractors that you can't kind of then like double click in and say, well, what was the specifics of that?
00:20:59
Speaker
like I can imagine you get some like outliers where there's a contractor that's screwed over, you know there's like a subby that's screwed over five contractors, and they're going to rate really low. But you know with the cycle time of construction, they could they could be doing that for a couple of years before the rating system even like feeds back. that That's a ah problem. So I imagine you'll definitely be able to like uncover very bad actors, but if you're if you're If you've got three vendors for your project, then one's a 4.2, one's a 3.9, and one's a 3.6. How do you take that into account? Would you take it into account?
00:21:35
Speaker
Yeah. Or we should just do what we always do, which is what's the cheap what's the cheapest one? And are they above a one? Oh wait, you you always have really poor performing contracts, but we say funny. So there's that there's going to be that really weird grey area. um And at the moment, it looks like it's relatively small contractors using it. So until you have the masses on there, it's probably not very useful. And unless the masses understand that the big contractors are actually letting works on there, they're not going to commit too much time you would expect. I can't see it taking off big time unless a government sort of mandates it. We've got a tool here. It's pretty poor. they could The government could say, well, let's stop developing our own system and just use this one. The sub supply chain
00:22:20
Speaker
probably aren't that keen on having these public reviews. They'd rather probably go in a bit colder and be able to like form their own narrative and control that narrative. um then you i don' feel I don't know if looked recently, but like Google reviews is like a dumpster fire if you're like a small business. Yeah, you only see the bad. Yeah. And then the other part is, if you're the main contractor, putting a bid out for to get prices or responses. and A contract a sub supply chain member goes, we don't use this tool. Are they then not allowed to submit outside of that tool? Are you forcing them to use that tool? Are you then narrowing your pool of contractors that you can use because you've decided to use this platform but you only get the community in there? I don't think i don't think it even um does that submission piece. I think it's literally just a ah rating system. ah It literally is like a G2 type of
00:23:14
Speaker
yeah It allows you to ah allows you to sort of put something out there that has ah like the documents, it allows you to do the communication, it allows you to do bits and pieces. I don't think it does the like vendor selection process after that. So yeah, it's a good point. It's kind of just the front but the early top of funnel type stuff.
00:23:38
Speaker
It, there's definitely like some things that can be, there's definitely a problem here. I just, it's hard to see how it's valuable enough to solve. um Unlike G2. So for those that don't know G2, G2's are like a big rate, a platform that does a feedback and rating of a lot of software products.

Rail Innovations: Leon-Turin Tunnel

00:23:56
Speaker
And it's got this big community of people and they actually make money by funneling leads to software vendors. So I don't know.
00:24:05
Speaker
ClickUp or Asana or something gets ah people can click through and request like a demo or info and they they make money on the leads. The difference with construction is how hyper local it is. And so the likelihood, even if this website had as much traffic as G2, which is very, very lofty goal, the likelihood that the person looking for ah a drilling company or a piling company is geographically located in a spot service by you as the potential piling company is like, almost nothing, whereas like a software company, they can just serve it anywhere in the world. So the all the traffic is, you know, good traffic as long as it's looking for the right. Yeah. So it it just seems like a, I don't know, it seems like a very challenged business model. And then on the flip side of that, you have, you have some good, you have some really cool companies doing the like procurement platform type thing. And each of those are kind of building their own little pre-collification system thing attached to it, which will have better visibility of the performance of the contractor and and probably does the rating. You know, you could imagine like a procure prof or whatever if they, had they could probably extract from the history of the contract, a lot of the rating stuff. And then just ask one or two questions on top. Yeah, it's got massive issues with trying to tackle big projects. But if they're focusing on smaller, so there's an application here called, I think it's called my builder where you just go on and you say, I need to like an extension done in my house. And you get a load of local builders.
00:25:40
Speaker
respond back to it with pricing information. So maybe it's just trying to... It's not that because there's a there's a million there's ah there's a million of them in the US. um So yeah, it's not it's definitely not like that kind of like like five of the construction work or whatever. Yeah. um It's definitely heavy. Like you said at the start, it's for heavy civil. Yeah. and Nice explainer video would have been handy. Well, it's about now you wish you had an explainer. No, I think like, obviously, to definitely see that there's a problem.
00:26:10
Speaker
Yeah, the problem exists is why are you doing one part of like three core parts of this process? That's the but question mark. How do you extract enough value from that to have a business is probably the harder question. Tricky. So definitely good luck to them. I'd be interesting to see how it progressed because yeah, they can see they've got the plans for like this API platform. You can imagine how someone's running procurement in like another platform. So, you know, yeah whatever, Procore or whatever, and then they make a call out to this marketplace thing and get some scoring stuff back. And there's some value exchange there, but it requires you to have already solved the problem of everyone's on the platform. and We've got a really rust rebating rating system. Anyway, I think yeah ah interested to see how it ah progresses.
00:26:57
Speaker
So we jump onto our last one, last topic. We're running out of time. Yep. All right. Let's jump into final topic. Uh, and we'll keep it snappy because we're showing on time, but the, uh, previously we've talked about Raoul Baltica as part of, uh, trans European transport network. 10T. There are two other the major projects currently underway alongside Rail Bowl to go and one of them is this Leon-Tatorin high-speed rail project which is a 270 mile rail line with a planned tunnel that's set to be the world's longest rail tunnel upon completion.
00:27:34
Speaker
I feel like we've done a lot of worlds are just the longest um or most number of football fields today. ah This is a yeah really cool project and I think super valuable in terms of what it's trying to do, where it's planned to complete in 2032.
00:27:54
Speaker
ah reduce travel time through the Alps, so this for those that don't know geography, the same people that looking at where is Jordan before. ah This is actually going through the Alps from France to Italy, so straight under some great skiing. It's supposed to shift over 1 million trucks per year from road to rail through this route, which yeah historically has been a lot of the freight network here, a lot of the freight movement here has been road travel over and through the Alps and reduce CO2 emission by around 3 million tonnes annually, which that seems like a lot of tonnes. So I think it's a cool project, Carlos.
00:28:34
Speaker
Yeah, really cool. It's one that's been long in the making, so it looks like they wanted to start in 2002, which was 22 years ago. But it says there's political delays, but it seems like it's to the Italy were non-committal and actually hard committed to the scheme in 2019. That doesn't sound like that. Yeah, and the EU are quite heavily funding it, so I think they're funding 40% and it's going to rise to 55%. So, yeah, it's... a quite is heavily subsidised. That was probably a part of the kicker that Italy hard committed to the scheme. It's pretty big. They've already let some over one billion pound packages. The two big ones already are the tunnel boring sort of packages. um So there's a 22 kilometre section tunnel given to IFAJ. Spy bat technology for it. Yeah, good.
00:29:23
Speaker
that so And then the ah the second one, these are both around hunt one and a half billion, is ah Vinci and WeBuild. So yeah, some pretty mega schemes. I think it's speed batignolas. I'm just going to guess, but we'll get we'll we'll get some corrections then.
00:29:38
Speaker
Nice. I'll let you do it next time because ah yeah, I'm going to get called out for this quite a lot. So yeah, massive project. I don't know if like driving on those roads, they're not big highways and they do wrap around the mountain. So the reduction in CO2, the more than halving and travel time, letting those nice beautiful roads not have a million trucks a year on them, like seems like a triple win.
00:30:01
Speaker
um So, um yeah, awesome project. It would be a cool one to work on. Not many tunnels are built under the Alps all rounds. Thumbs up, I think. Yeah, definitely. ah In terms of ah projects that you might move ah to go and work on, I'd say you're going to be located um pretty conveniently next to some great skiing. I'll take the Shambry office. yeah yeah ah So no, cool project and good to see it like finally underway. Yeah, I think what did we say that you said 40, 50% EU funding and then kind of split the difference roughly between France and and Italy. Yeah, pretty much. Although most of the rail is in France. So there definitely some, that's probably the political delays um that were split based on that in one or the other.
00:30:55
Speaker
If only we didn't leave the EU and we split the difference of the EU on HS2, that'd be handy. Although you'd have to then explain to people that some of your money was going to build the tunnel between France

Episode Recap and Farewell

00:31:06
Speaker
and Italy. Yeah. yeah Cool, mate. Do you want to, that I think that was a yeah super interesting project and yeah, thought the topics that we covered today were cool. So do you want to read us out? Yeah, no, no. Great selection. Thumbs up to Olu. But ah no, thank you very much. the last The last minute change of topic on the third one was well worth it. And and I'm not at all upset about reading in the wrong one.
00:31:31
Speaker
Yeah, they were thank you. No, thank you very much, everyone, for tuning into the show. If you enjoyed today's episode, please do like the video or follow us on your chosen podcast platform. ah We really appreciate your support and we'll catch you all next week. Bye bye.