Porto Romano project - an overview

Albania plans to move commercial cargo operations from the existing port in central Durrës to the area of Porto Romano, freeing up the Durrës waterfront for urban, tourism, and marina development. The current Durrës port faces spatial limitations and is less suited to modern large-scale cargo operations. Porto Romano is being developed as a deep-water port (and industrial cluster) capable of handling larger vessels and significantly higher cargo volumes.

Haskoning’s first assignment for the Porto Romano project was to prepare the detailed technical design of Porto Romano, which was awarded to Haskoning on 24 December 2021 after an international public tender competition. 

Following the successful completion of the detailed technical design, Haskoning was awarded a second assignment related to this port development. The Government of Albania, by Executive Decision, retained Haskoning as Project Management Consultant (“PMC”) in the next phase of the Porto Romano project. Haskoning’s PMC assignment started in July 2024 and has been scheduled to run for a minimum of five years. The scope of the PMC assignment includes tender management and evaluation services, construction supervision and contract management services. These are professional services that we provide to many public and private sector clients around the globe, often as a follow up to the preparation of design and tender documentation of a project. 

On behalf of the client, we facilitated the tender process for the construction works in accordance with Albanian public procurement law and requirements. The tender process for the construction works has been delayed and the process is currently under review by the relevant Albanian authorities, resulting in a standstill of the procurement process. 

The current status (August 2026) is that the Government of Albania is considering several alternative procurement routes for the construction works whilst the operational work has come to a standstill. We are assisting the Government on reviewing these routes as part of our PMC assignment.