Donald Trump's major infrastructure plan is still just a dream, still to be transformed into laws and appropriation. But for Salini Impregilo, the fragility of and demand for infrastructure in the US, with or without stimulus from the White House, is fertile ground for a new, ambitious strategy of long-term overseas expansion.

This is a strategy that the company's 59-year-old CEO Pietro Salini openly calls a “dream project,” which could double its US business in three years. To make it a reality, Salini is shifting focus: it's looking beyond individual contracts and—with the launchpad of its new US subsidiary, the historic construction company Lane Construction created in 1890 and acquired in 2016—will offer comprehensive technology solutions for a range of challenges, from high-speed links between the East and West coasts, to the thousands of dams spread across the country, to environmental reclamation.