“For us, it’s over”, the builders of the Olympic sites are preparing to hand over – Libération

The work phase ends in twelve days for Solideo, the public establishment responsible for Olympic infrastructure. His boss, Nicolas Ferrand, praised this Tuesday, December 19, deadlines and a budget met, with three exceptions.

Everyone goes with their memory, and their image, but the relief is perceptible. “Last year, we were in a yurt and it was very cold,” recalls the communications director of Solideo, the public establishment responsible for the Olympic infrastructures, welcoming – in the warmth – the journalists for an extensive visit construction site in Saint-Denis, this Tuesday, December 19. In winter 2022, “we were in a noodle bowl,” adds Nicolas Ferrand, boss of Solideo, after praising the work on the motorway interchanges in Seine-Saint-Denis, including a pedestrian footbridge made of Morvan wood which gave engineers a cold sweat because we had never made wooden structures above a highway. “But today, things are going well,” literally and figuratively, assures the director.

Created in 2017, Solideo has worked hard for seventy-five months and seventeen days and there are only twelve days left before the scheduled end of the work, January 1st. But the time has already come for general satisfaction. “When we created the Solideo, the general opinion was that we wouldn’t succeed,” recalls Ferrand, who gained salt-and-pepper temples and an even more slender silhouette from the operation. . And who has difficulty hiding his emotion: “For us, it’s over, it’s the last time we come to present things to you,” he told the press. However, the CEO still has room to grow a few gray hairs: from the beginning of January a two-month “reserve” period opens for possible changes. Then, on March 1, the engineer will solemnly hand over the keys of the village to the organizing committee (Cojo), which will take possession of the premises in preparation for the Olympic Games (from July 26 to August 11) until the end of the Paralympics, on September 8.

Leak testing

When the polytechnician took the helm of the public company six years ago, major projects (“useless and imposed”, according to the ecologists’ phrase) bit the dust, from Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport to EuropaCity, in Gonesse (Val-d’Oise). “Everyone thought that the Olympic works would come out painfully a few days before the events but here we are,” he breathes. Delighted to have launched a project making France a “great building country”, nothing less, with 70 projects and a budget of 4.5 billion euros (constructions and renovations). In fact, of all Olympic works, the promise was to reach 89% of projects completed by December 31. Ultimately, it will be 84% with a “stable in 2016 euros” budget, which means without the State extension in 2022 to absorb inflation.

Solideo still dug into its nest egg, the “program supplement reserve”, created to absorb all last-minute changes: out of 100 million euros, 43 million have been spent so far. Maintaining budgets and deadlines means, among other things, that the pools at the Olympic Aquatic Center (CAO) are undergoing leak tests with more colored water to be able to easily detect possible leaks. Or that the Porte de la Chapelle Arena, designed for badminton and gymnastics, is carrying out complicated air conditioning tests given that for the ribbon event it is necessary to be able to ventilate without passing any air at all.

Tiles and “forest hearts”

For the construction management, this result is not a miracle: it is a question of collective spirit and Churchill as a tutelary figure, but we are still talking about five years of construction punctuated by covid, the “Chinese lockdown”, dixit Ferrand, when Beijing had closed its borders and its factories, and the war in Ukraine meant an explosion in the costs of raw materials. Three files, however, have fallen behind schedule: the Grand Palais, where the fencing and taekwondo competition is to take place; the Pichet eco-district, part of the Olympic village (500 beds delivered in a hurry out of a total of 14,500); and the Colombes swimming pool which is to host synchronized swimming training where it will be “really very tight”.

Around the former Cité du cinéma, which will become a gigantic dining hall for athletes, the village’s patchwork of colorful buildings has taken its final shape. Seven months before the Games, along an arm of the Seine, the “Olympic Square” and its central oak tree still look like a wasteland and it is difficult to understand how the athletes will be able to come and meet the press and their families. on a half concrete, half garden structure surrounded by a descending ramp. In the buildings, we are laying tiling and parquet flooring, plus structural work, even if the access roads are still cut off to leave room for construction vehicles.

A bit melancholic at the idea of ​​soon having to entrust their baby, the Solideo officials are enthusiastic about defending “an urban planning of boats allowing the winds of the Seine to enter” on the site (and hoping to thwart a possible heatwave by July) and “hearts of the forest” planted in the middle of baby pink or all wood and white buildings. Forests which will in reality be simple gardens and have yet to come out of the ground. This will be the spring job.