U.S: Ferrovial, Georgia Tech to “Reimagine Transportation”, Create “New Mobility Solutions”

Fer­rovial, a glob­al infra­struc­ture oper­a­tor, and the U.S Geor­gia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, announced last week “a long-term part­ner­ship focused on advanc­ing inno­va­tion in trans­port infra­struc­ture”, reports a press release.

This col­lab­o­ra­tion will allow for “joint research activ­i­ties, pro­vid­ing new edu­ca­tion­al and devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for stu­dents and enabling Fer­rovial to cre­ate a more sus­tain­able future for mobil­i­ty”. The agree­ment was for­mal­ly signed at the University’s cam­pus in Atlanta.

Andres Sac­ristan, CEO of Con­tra Glob­al, Ferrovial’s high­ways busi­ness, com­ment­ed, “Fer­rovial under­stands our indus­try must remain agile as trans­porta­tion con­tin­ues to evolve. By part­ner­ing with uni­ver­si­ties like Geor­gia Tech, we can con­tin­ue to improve the trav­el­er expe­ri­ence and bet­ter serve our clients bye pro­vid­ing new mobil­i­ty ser­vices.”

A pri­ma­ry inter­est for Fer­rovial is diver­si­fy­ing its present high­ly suc­cess­ful glob­al air­port con­struc­tion to ver­ti­ports. Via this new busi­ness, the com­pa­ny aims to design, build and oper­ate infra­struc­ture required by eVTOLs.

Fer­rovial has been col­lab­o­rat­ing with Geor­gia Tech for sev­er­al years, so this lat­est agree­ment is an exten­sion. The Uni­ver­si­ty is an attrac­tive part­ner due to an exper­tise in traf­fic engi­neer­ing, research capa­bil­i­ties in con­struc­tion, air­ports and ener­gy.

Angel Cabr­era, Pres­i­dent of Geor­gia Tech, remarked, “Fer­rovial is reimag­in­ing trans­porta­tion and this col­lab­o­ra­tion will enable our researchers and stu­dents to gain a first­hand under­stand­ing of the needs of our nation’s infra­struc­ture.”

A Graph­ic Image of a Poten­tial UK Ver­ti­port (Cred­it: Fer­rovial)

It is like­ly Fer­rovial will become a lead­ing play­er with­in the ver­ti­port indus­try, where some of the new com­pa­nies present­ly being set up for this mar­ket will be squeezed out by such a glob­al giant. 

For exam­ple, back in Octo­ber 2021, Fer­rovial Air­ports announced plans to deploy a net­work of more than 25 ver­ti­ports around the UK. To devel­op the design and engi­neer­ing com­po­nents of this infra­struc­ture, Fer­rovial is part­ner­ing with Grimshaw Archi­tects and glob­al engi­neer­ing, man­age­ment and devel­op­ment con­sul­tan­cy, Mott Mac­Don­ald.

This news fol­lowed an agree­ment to devel­op anoth­er net­work of more than 10 ver­ti­ports in Flori­da, U.S.  In June this year, Fer­rovial part­nered with prop­er­ty devel­op­er, Mil­li­gan, to iden­ti­fy and devel­op the UK sites. It is like­ly, Fer­rovial will become the glob­al go-to com­pa­ny for lead­ing eVTOL com­pa­nies.

For the com­pa­ny has over 20 years’ expe­ri­ence of invest­ing, devel­op­ing and oper­at­ing 33 air­ports around the world includ­ing the Unit­ed States, Aus­tralia and Chile. It cur­rent­ly has four air­ports in the Unit­ed King­dom alone. With the largest finan­cial stake in Heathrow, it is the core share­hold­er and indus­tri­al part­ner. Fer­rovial also part­ly owns Glas­gow, Aberdeen and Southamp­ton Air­ports.

Do not be sur­prised if ini­tial UK ver­ti­ports will be con­struct­ed at the coun­try’s major air­port hubs.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.ferrovial.com/en-gb/business/airports/vertiports/

https://www.gatech.edu/

(Top image: Ángel Cabr­era, pres­i­dent of Geor­gia Tech (l) and Andres Sac­ristan, CEO of Cin­tra Glob­al ®)