Bouygues Construction / Soletanche Bachy Group Consortium wins £131.3m Paris Metro Lines 14 Contract

A consortium consisting of Bouygues Travaux Publics (lead company and a subsidiary of Bouygues Construction), Soletanche Bachy France, Soletanche Bachy Tunnels and CSM Bessac has signed a contract worth €164.9 million with RATP for the second tunnel package of the Paris metro line 14 extension project, north of Paris, running from Clichy-St Ouen to Pleyel, in the neighbouring town of St Denis.

This underground infrastructure project, which is 55 percent financed by Société du Grand Paris, will help to relieve congestion on Line 13, improving travel conditions and access to Paris for people living in the northern suburbs.

The consortium’s construction works will include: a 2.2-kilometre tunnel linking Clichy-St Ouen and Pleyel, including a tunnel that links to the train maintenance and marshalling zone; The Mairie de St Ouen station; and four ancillary structures, including reinforcing the infrastructures of line C of the RER (Regional Express Network).

The consortium will lay a strong emphasis on sustainable development. In particular, it will focus on limiting nuisances in a very dense urban environment. All excavated materials will be evacuated by river, for instance, to avoid disrupting road traffic in the towns concerned by the project.

The project, which will be carried out with an 80 metre-long earth pressure balance tunnel boring machine, includes several major technical challenges, such as taking account of the diversity of soils along the route of the tunnel and the reinforcement of the infrastructures of line C of the RER, beneath which the connecting tunnel to the train maintenance and marshalling zone will pass.

To meet these challenges, the consortium will analyse all the data collected from the TBM and resulting from monitoring on the surface in real time in order to have the capacity for immediate response.

The works will begin this summer and last several years, mobilising nearly 260 employees at peak periods. The companies in the consortium have undertaken to hire site workers through social inclusion schemes, providing 20,000 hours of employment.

Bouygues Travaux Publics and the entities of the Soletanche Bachy Group have previously carried out several underground infrastructure projects: a section of the Toulouse metro, the second tube of the Toulon tunnel and a tunnel for a metro line in Hong Kong. They are currently constructing the underground section of the Nice tramway.

Soletanche-Bachy was acquired by Vinci in 2007.