Press releases

The ENGAGE consortium is tasked from 2011 to 2018 with a project management consultancy mission and the engineering, procurement and construction management across in all specialities for the construction of the entire site. Their joint efforts have today been rewarded by the prestigious Industry and Technology Prize in the 2017 French National Engineering Awards (GPNI).

The ITER project consists of recreating on Earth - and in a controlled environment - the fusion reaction of hydrogen atoms, in the same way as it occurs in the centre of the sun and stars. The programme was designed to demonstrate the scientific and technical feasibility of this process. Research into fusion could constitute a sustainable alternative to all current forms of energy generation, by developing a safe, inexhaustible and environmentally friendly source of energy.

The largest experimental fusion facility ever built, ITER is also the first global cooperative project of its kind. Europe contributes to nearly half of the construction cost of the machine, and the other six members of this international partnership (China, Japan, India, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation and the United States) all contribute in equal parts to the remainder.

ENGAGE is committed to a constantly creative approach to fulfil the challenges thrown down by the ITER project: in addition to the technical specificities of the project, the operation's volume and the level of safety and reliability, aligned on the very highest standards, are elements which have led the consortium to develop prolific expertise in all the areas of its engineering mission.

The programme consists of building the platform's infrastructure spanning half a hectare, created by the European agency F4E (Fusion for Energy), representing around forty industrial buildings, and two nuclear buildings: one to accommodate the Tokamak (an experimental reactor 30 metres in height and weighing 25,000 tonnes) and the other a plant for the preparation and reprocessing of a hydrogen isotope, tritium.

These buildings must house a large number of facilities and processes, and must additionally be scaled to resist an entire series of accident scenarios: earthquakes, leaks in the cooling circuit, loss of vacuum in the Tokamak, etc. The programme therefore essentially contains security requirements (approximately 300 for nuclear buildings at the beginning).

Furthermore, nuclear fusion reconciles energy generation and sustainable development (no highly radioactive nuclear waste, inexhaustible fuel, possibility of immediate emergency cut-off). In view of such a challenge, the design and construction was duty bound to incorporate sustainability as an input data for the project, according to three conditions: protect the environment, promote social cohesion and promote a responsible economy.

The project is currently in construction phase of the infrastructure and buildings. Three floors out of eight have so far been built on the central Tokamak building.  Four auxiliary buildings are watertight in which technical building and fitting works have started. The other auxiliary buildings are still in their structural works phase.

With regard to infrastructure, the first high-voltage (400 kV) substation has been delivered. Some of the platform's developed zones will soon be handed over to ITER in time for the arrival of the process assembly teams.

In all, approximately 1,800 people work on this highly complex and dense work site, always complying with rigorous timeframes and quality and safety standards.

The essential originality of this project lies in the digital model under "3D as master", coordinated and managed by ENGAGE for the building part, to guarantee the convergence of the building and process concepts, configure input data, identify and resolve interfaces and control modifications.

The management of the security requirements of the buildings was developed by ENGAGE on a database to enable the tracking of requirements, their versions and the way they have been addressed by the different designers and builders.

Managing the configuration of all of the contributors additionally required the implementation of a dedicated base to deal with the very high volume of modifications (one per day on average) of variable size, and constantly affecting the design and construction master plan.

ENGAGE deployed a common database for all project contributors which guarantees the consistency of document use in terms of recording, tracking, distribution and changes. Considering the sizeable volume of information and queries (1.87 TB of documents stored, 70,000 connections a month, 10,000 documents published per month), ENGAGE contributed to the development of version 4 of SGTI (an Egis shared construction project management solution) and introduced specific utilisation processes and the required efficient validation circuits (further information at www.sgti4.fr).

The French National Engineering Awards are organised by Syntec Ingénierie, the national engineering trade association, in partnership with the French Ministry for the Ecological and Inclusive Transition and the Ministry of Economy and Finance's directorate general for enterprise (DGE), and in association with Le Moniteur group.

Photos: ITER

Egis is recognised internationally for its airport consulting and engineering capabilities. This expertise is also backed by the strength of a 17 airports network across the globe. As an investor and airport operator Egis has the capacity to bring added-value in airport operation, development and management as well. Building on this unique blend of expertise Egis focuses on operational performance in every project.

© CC BY-SA 3.0

Egis tasked with several assignments within the project

The consortium will be working on the detailed design stage, following the preparation of the Detail Project Report by Delhi Integrated Multi Modal Transit Systems (DIMTS).

The main assignments to be carried out by the consortium are as follows:

• The definition of technical parameters (SOD) for entire corridor of Delhi Merut  RRTS (rapid rail transit systems): gauge, tunnel dimensions, track structure, validation of traction power supply system, etc.;
• Detail Design studies of 16 km of elevated viaduct, including foundations and superstructure, etc;
• Preparation of tender documents;
• Supervision of Geotechnical surveys;
• Support during construction;

Egis is the lead contractor in the consortium and, in addition to the technical assignments divided up between the two partners, will be responsible for the general coordination and administration of the contract.

This contract constitutes an important opportunity for Egis, offering the group a foothold on the extremely promising market of Indian high speed, also allowing us to develop and diversify our transportation activities in this country.

This new project also consolidates our design production assets in the Delhi NCR region and acknowledges our active presence stretching back more than 20 years in this country, the Group's second most important country in terms of workforce, with 1,800 employees and many projects in the areas of railways, highways, buildings, ports and smart cities.

Egis and Populous, the International sports and entertainment design practice, were chosen in 2016 to collaborate on the Paris 2024 bid and have provided the necessary technical expertise and assistance required to develop plans for no fewer than 38 Olympic and Paralympic venues spread across Paris.

The winning concept of Paris as an Olympic Park will see Olympic and Paralympic events take place against the spectacular backdrop of Paris’ historic buildings, streets and landmarks including the, Champs Elysees and River Seine as well as beach volleyball at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. The Games will build on the history and identity of Paris, as well its experience in hosting the climax of the world-renown Tour de France, to create an unforgettable experience.

The architectural design for both new and temporary venues and facilities will seek to shape and integrate sporting spectacles in the city’s urban landscape whist supporting Paris 2024’s commitment to be the most sustainable Games ever.

As part of the bid, Populous and Egis has worked in association with ISC, a sport and culture consulting agency on plans to ensure the existing venues are ready for the scale and needs of Olympic and Paralympic events.

Populous’ involvement with Paris 2024 takes its overall major events experience to 13 Olympic and 7 Paralympic Games including Sydney 2000, London 2012, and Rio 2016. Populous is also the only firm to have designed 3 main Olympic stadiums. It advises on the full design and delivery spectrum, from assisting bid teams with submissions, helping masterplan the major venues and facilities, to the design of the main stadium and hundreds of temporary venues needed to support modern Games.

Populous Senior Principal Ben Vickery said, “We are proud to have played a part in the successful Paris 2024 bid.   Bringing people together to enjoy an unforgettable experience is the overriding ambition of Populous in all that we do and is at the heart of the Paris 2024 vision. The city of Paris will be a magnificent Olympic Park and transforming some of the world’s most beautiful and historic sites into temporary stunning stages for sport will provide unforgettable images around the globe.”

Populous Principal Francois Clement said, “Paris is one of the leading cities of the C40 focusing on tackling climate change while improving the health and wellbeing of its citizens. Paris 2024 will share with the world an unforgettable and emotional Olympic and Paralympic Games anchored in the core values and ideals of the IOC. Populous was delighted to be part of the team turning Paris into an elegant and connected Olympic Park ever delivering stunning venues in one of the most prestigious World Heritage site. Under Agenda 2020, Paris 2024 shares the rings of success with LA 2028 for a better Olympics and Paralympics Games in a better world.”

Egis's experience in sporting venues includes its contributions to major projects such as the construction or renovation of most of the host stadiums used during the 2016 UEFA European Championship: the Matmut-Atlantique stadium in Bordeaux, the Geoffroy-Guichard stadium in Saint-Etienne, the Allianz Riviera stadium in Nice, the Velodrome stadium in Marseille, and the Pierre-Mauroy stadium in Lille. Outside France, Egis is also involved in several other sports facilities such as the “Stade du 5-Juillet” and the Baraki stadium in Algiers, Algeria; the Olympic stadium in Istanbul, Turkey; stadiums in Marrakech and Tangiers in Morocco, and a stadium in the Middle East.

Nicolas Jachiet, Egis Chairman and CEO said, “Our Group is proud to have taken part in this Olympic and Paralympic Bid adventure. Our consulting teams have contributed all their expertise, their anticipation capabilities in technical and organizational issues and their project management know-how to help to bring the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics to Paris. Egis is an international group with extensive and long-standing experience in designing major sports complexes and sports events. Thanks to the multiplicity of its skills and its cross specialization processes, Egis is now recognized as a major player in the engineering of stadiums and the organization of major events.”

Diogo Taddei, from Egis, who supervised the work of the consortium, said “Our mission was to understand how each sport and discipline could best function in existing venues, new buildings when required as legacy and temporary modular sites, identifying the best option in each case. One of the biggest challenges was to transform illustrious Parisian monuments into sports venues, adapting them to the requirements of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.”

Egis will provide these service to a network with a total length of around 24 km, including 15.5 km of tunnels. The network comprises Legacy Way, Go Between Bridge, AirportlinkM7, Inner City Bypass and Clem7. The services will commence progressively on the assets between 2017 and 2019.

TNS will deliver integrated services in line with Transurban Queensland’s network approach to operations and maintenance. Network-wide operations and maintenance will drive enhanced outcomes, achieve synergies and deliver high quality services to the tunnel network users through faster response times and a clear focus on safe lane availability.

This success fuels the positive trend of Egis in Australia, following the commencement of operations and maintenance of Legacy Way, the incident response services on the M2 / Lane Cove Tunnel in Sydney (both in 2015) and the pre-operations phase of WestConnex, Australia’s largest road infrastructure project, in 2016.

Egis strengthens its position as a leading tunnel services provider in Australia and worldwide, with 97.5 km of road tunnels under contract in 10 different countries.

Our business activity outside France continued to grow (+13.6% in 2016) and now accounts for 63% of the Group’s turnover (as against 60% in 2015). This predominant share of international activities can notably be attributed to several remarkable commercial achievements in our three non-French domestic markets of India, the Middle East and Brazil. Examples include the coordination of the Smart City programme in the Indian city of Bhubaneswar, the construction supervision of the ETLAL residential tower in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and two major rail infrastructure projects for the mining mega-corporation Vale in Brazil.

Egis is continuing to develop its business activities in other regions of the world, winning contracts for a number of substantial projects such as the extension of the West Midlands tram network in Birmingham in the UK, the contract signature and commissioning of the third bridge over the Bosphorus and the northern orbital road around Istanbul in Turkey, the signature and the takeover of operations of the Limerick Tunnel in Ireland, the construction of the future Olembe sports stadium in Cameroon, and the EPCM of the Great Mosque of Algiers in Algeria.

Turnover generated in France has picked up again thanks to several major contracts. Egis has for example won some substantial new contracts for the Grand Paris flagship project (EPCM of systems on line 18 of the future metro, EPCM of the infrastructure on line 15 East, construction of the Pont-de-Bondy station) and confirmed its interest for the metropolitan region’s largest transport and urban redevelopment project. Elsewhere in France, the Group was appointed to operate Pau-Pyrénées, Brest and Quimper airports for twenty years, and was also awarded the EPCM of improvement works on the A10 motorway north of Orleans and the design and construction of all of the maritime infrastructure in the land reclamation project Anse du Portier in Monaco. 2016 also witnessed the completion and commissioning of several leading projects in which Egis played a key role: the Alexis de Tocqueville media library in Caen, the Brest cable car service, the Brittany digital campus, etc.

Egis furthermore won several accolades for the most iconic projects of the year, including the French National Engineering Award for the Citadelle Bridge in Strasbourg, and a 2016 MIPIM Award in the “Best Futura Mega Project” category for the Duo Towers in Paris’ 13^th arrondissement.

The CMA - which stands for “Centre des Métiers de l’Aviation” - was born from the objective of the two groups to pool their complementary expertise and offer training services to aviation professionals in Africa, in compliance with international standards and best practices. CMA will be an IATA Authorized Training Centre and will benefit from Camas’ position as ICAO TRAINAIR Plus member.

CMA's offering is building on the know-how of both Egis and Camas. It is aimed at companies as well as individuals, for ab-initio and in-service training as well. In the airport sector, the portfolio of training programmes encompasses a broad range of topics: ground handling and cargo, safety and security, dangerous goods, planning and operation, certification and audit, customer service, logistics, management, IT, and languages.

Meeting the needs of aviation professionals

Olivier Baric, Aviation Director – Africa at Egis, says: “The CMA will promote the recruitment of local trainers to offer training programmes that are even more adapted to the regional context and needs. One of the major objectives is thus to contribute to the improvement of safety and security management in the subregion. In this perspective, setting up our training centre in Abidjan is a strategic choice which relies on the city’s attractiveness in a country with important prospects for air traffic growth”.

The CMA will meet skills development needs from staff working at airports where Egis is shareholder and reference technical partner in Côte d’Ivoire (AERIA), Gabon (ADL) and Republic of Congo (AERCO). It will also meet the needs from other airport operators and service providers in West and Central Africa, and from airlines, administrations and organisations, Civil Aviation authorities and air navigation service providers as well.

Find out more: http://www.cmaciv.com

CDG Express: an attractive and strategic project

With 66 million passengers in 2015 and over 80 million a year forecast by 2025, Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle (CDG) is Europe’s second busiest airport. Once it has been completed in 2023, the CDG Express rail link will take passengers from the airport into Gare de l’Est in the heart of downtown Paris in just 20 minutes, for a total investment of €1.4 billion. It will provide Paris with a first-class city-airport link, on a par with those enjoyed by other European and international capitals.

CDG Express is both an attractive and a strategic project for France’s capital city, in line with the sustainable development challenges of enhancing airport access by harnessing clean transport solutions. By providing both tourists and business people with state-of-the art transport, the project will showcase the Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle airport hub and boost the competitiveness of Paris and the surrounding region. It will also be a big plus for Paris’ bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games.

A highly technical and complex project

Financing, construction and maintenance agreements for CDG Express are already in place and the entire project is of a rare technical complexity that will require technical interaction between the airport authorities, the French national rail network operator, local government in densely-populated urban areas and Gare de l’Est rail terminal right in the heart of the city.

The new 32 km-long line – including 8 km of new track – will link Gare de l’Est to Terminal 2 of Charles-de-Gaulle Airport.

The necessary interaction between CDG Express and the existing RER B rail link poses major potential constraints. In-depth knowledge of the systems and technologies used by French rail operator SNCF will be required in order to get around these obstacles, together with strict security for passageways and all site locations. Because the project will be located in densely-populated areas with an extensive existing transport network, work will have to take place at night to minimise the impact on network traffic.

Engineering work should begin in 2018 and services are due to start in 2023, i.e., work will be spread over a five-year period due to the major constraints involved.

Technical assistance “made in Egis”

Egis will provide technical assistance services to the project owner throughout the operations. This work will include:

• reviewing the pre-project design phase;
• assistance with preparing and negotiating concession, design-build, and operation-maintenance agreements;
• help with raising bank financing;
• reviewing the project design phase and providing assistance throughout the works phase; and
• assistance in deploying infrastructure operating systems.

Along with the various contracts already secured as part of the Grand Paris building project, this strategically and technically ambitious project will boost Egis’ profile in the Greater Paris region. It is a testimony to the trust and confidence that stakeholders in the rail sector place in Egis’ vast technical expertise and unrivalled professionalism.

Egis and R20 have joined forces to create a pre-investment fund specializing in sustainable waste management and the development of Waste-to-Energy projects. This partnership will prepare the different upstream actors (national and local governments, industry and investors) to take the decisions necessary for the development of concrete projects, allowing the market of sustainable waste management to reach maturity. For this purpose, the pre-investment fund will finance two concrete actions in developing and emerging countries:

• A campaign of feasibility studies in cities deemed mature, to identify, develop and structure projects likely to acheive the development objectives of local authorities and to be attractive to investors. These projects will be identified in close collaboration with industry and public and private investors.

• A training program for national and local decision-makers in waste management. The program will focus on three areas that are critical to the decision-making process:
  - the public policies needed for waste management
  - existing waste management technologies in the market today
  - the economic models and financial mechanisms necessary for the long-term success of sustainable waste management projects.

In light of their experience with several waste projects (Algeria, Maldives, Morocco, China), R20 and Egis intend to create an enabling environment that allows for the successful implementation of projects, such as waste sorting, recycling, and energy co-generation, thereby responding to serious environmental concerns.

R20 and Egis not only share the same vision and objective, but also the same values regarding the economic opportunities of waste management, including social benefits, the active participation of local communities in waste sorting and the creation of direct and indirect jobs.

This overall approach to sustainable development is part of the long-term commitment of Egis and its majority shareholder, CDC, for transitioning to a green economy.

The signing took place in the presence of Michèle Sabban, R20 President; Terry Tamminen, Strategic Advisor to the R20 Founding Chair, and CEO of the Leonardo Di Caprio Foundation; Christophe Nuttall, R20 Executive Director, Nicolas Jachiet, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Egis, Rémi Cunin, Executive Vice President of Egis; Rik Joosten, Director General of Egis Projects and Françoise Tauzinat of the Caisse des Dépôts Group. Was also present Catherine Jatteau, Deputy Director General of Egis Structures & Environment.

The structure is a metallic bridge with a through-arch supporting a curved suspended deck measuring 163 metres between abutment centres. While the blueprint adopted for the arch was a specific architectural intention, its shape is also a technical response to the exertions to which it is subjected.

“The innovation in the bridge essentially lies in finding the perfect geometry from a perspective of balancing thrusts,” explains Jean-Bernard Nappi, an architect at Egis, in charge of the architectural design of the structure.

Due to the urban restrictions on both banks, the route curves considerably as it passes over the Vauban docks. The placement of the arch, the width of the deck and the pattern of suspension cables offer sufficient gauge to allow the tramway and pavements to be created. They also result in a perfect balance of arch and deck thrusts.

Integrated design

“The structure is the result of highly integrated design between the architect and the engineers,” adds Claude Le Quéré, Bridge Engineer at Egis, responsible for designing the Citadelle Bridge. “All our work around designing the shape combined technical requirements with the aesthetic vision, with a desire for simplicity and the aim of making the bridge elegant, in keeping with the project for the future development of the area.”

The Engineering Structures and Railway teams at Egis pooled their skills to manage all the interfaces with the LRT line: the selection of a compatible alignment, the selection of a track-laying method, consideration of deformability criteria at each end of the bridge, and the integration of railway facilities and equipment.

The Citadelle Bridge is now part of the Strasbourg cityscape and fulfils the ambition of the Eurométropole to build an emblematic bridge, capable of acting as an anchor for the rehabilitation and urban development of part of the Strasbourg port zone.

* The innovation in the bridge essentially lies in finding the perfect geometry from a perspective of balancing thrusts,” explains Jean-Bernard Nappi, an architect at Egis, in charge of the architectural design of the structure.

** The Egis team comprises Jean-Bernard NAPPI, architect, Claude LE QUÉRÉ, Alexandros GIANNOPOULOS, Bridge Engineers, Nabil YAZBECK and Frédéric MENUEL, Bridge specialist at Egis.