At the Nations Award – Thinkingreen Spin-Off Venice 2026 event, held at the Hotel Ca’ Sagredo in Venice, FS Engineering shared its insights on a strategic priority for the nation's future: the interplay between mega-infrastructure projects, sustainable mobility, regional competitiveness, and the enhancement of cultural heritage and tourism.
Speaking at the opening session, Dario Lo Bosco, CEO and General Manager of FS Engineering, emphasised that physical infrastructure assets are more than just construction projects and should rather be viewed, more broadly, as complex systems capable of generating growth, accessibility, and connectivity; bridging the gap between regions and communities while bolstering the nation’s economic and social competitiveness.
This is the underlying vision that drives FS Engineering, which has evolved into a global leader in integrated, high-tech, and digital engineering within the FS Group. Backed by over 3,400 specialists across 15 countries and five continents, the company delivers comprehensive expertise that spans the entire infrastructure lifecycle.
This extensive capability is deployed across major international infrastructure projects: in India, where the company is delivery partner for some of the country’s most complex rail and metro projects; in Saudi Arabia, supporting the Vision 2030 masterplans and the Saudi Landbridge project; in Tanzania, through a recently launched partnership with the Tanzania Railways Corporation; as well as in strategic markets like the US and Australia, where FS Engineering continues to export the best of Italian engineering excellence. Ultimately, operating globally means exporting the value of our national ecosystem to the world, showcasing technical expertise, project management prowess, multidisciplinary capacity, innovation, safety, and a culture of quality assurance.
A significant portion of the panel discussion focused on the digital transformation fundamentally reshaping the engineering sector. At FS Engineering, the integration of multidimensional BIM (up to 8D), Digital Twins, Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, drones, LiDAR, Reality Capture, advanced sensor technology, data analytics, and Digital Control Rooms allows the company to design, monitor, and manage mega-projects with unprecedented levels of insight and predictive capability.
The ultimate objective is highly practical: to enhance asset safety, mitigate risks, manage delivery schedules and budgets, minimise variations, and drive better-informed decision-making throughout the whole-life cycle of the infrastructure.
Artificial Intelligence is a powerful enabling tool, but technology augments the engineer rather than replacing them. Professional expertise, accountability, human oversight, and technical validation remain central to our work, making human capital FS Engineering’s greatest asset. Lo Bosco noted that "The major infrastructure projects of the future demand advanced technology, but above all, they require skilled professionals capable of managing this growing complexity by integrating high-level engineering, academic research, and new digital capabilities."
Contributing to the debate at the event in Venice, Irene Gionfriddo— Head of International, No Captive, Business Affairs and Sustainability Management at FS Engineering—spoke on the panel dedicated to "Sustainable road and rail transport: new perspectives for national tourism as a driver of regional value."
"Our design choices seamlessly blend traditional engineering expertise with a deep sensitivity to environmental, regional, and social contexts. This approach is backed by our extensive track record in delivering infrastructure projects both in the Italy and internationally, alongside a major commitment to pioneering new design methodologies, construction techniques, and asset monitoring systems developed through global institutional and research partnerships," Gionfriddo underlined.
Addressing these strategic issues in Venice carries profound significance, as the interplay between mobility, heritage preservation, the environment, and development is starker here than anywhere else. The new city rail link to Marco Polo Airport directly embodies this integrated vision by connecting rail and air networks, improving accessibility, and creating a more sustainable relationship between a world-class destination and the broader region.
FS Engineering’s participation in the Thinkingreen event provided a vital platform to discuss sustainability, innovation, and integrated mobility, confirming that modern engineering is the key catalyst for balancing economic growth, heritage protection, competitiveness, and quality of life. As Lo Bosco highlighted in his closing remarks, the core challenge for contemporary engineering is not choosing between infrastructure and the landscape, technology and culture, or growth and sustainability, but making them evolve together—deploying cutting-edge technology and the best of Italian engineering excellence to help both domestic and international partners build safer, smarter, and more resilient infrastructure networks.