Interview

Paris 2024 Olympics, J-500: "The sites will be well delivered at the end of the year"

General view of the construction of the transport site for the Olympic and Paralympic Games at Porte Maillot station, in Paris, on February 13, 2023. AFP - ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT

Text by: Bruno Faure Follow

6 mins

The Paris 2024 Olympic Games will officially begin on July 26, 2024. But where are the preparatory works, the construction sites of the main installations necessary for the smooth running of this planetary event?

Interview with Nicolas Ferrand, Managing Director of Solideo (Olympic Works Delivery Company).

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RFI: What is Solideo and what are your specifications?

Nicolas Ferrand:

To host the

in 2024, there are two structures.

On the one hand, the Paris 2024 Organizing Committee (Cojo) to organize the event itself, and on the other hand Solideo to build all the structures necessary for the Games and which will have a life afterwards, the permanent works.

Basically, we build the theater and the Cojo organizes the play and the decor.

We were created in 2017, we will finish our mission around 2026 with a budget of 4.5 billion euros for 64 objects to build.

With 500 days to go before the event, we obviously wonder about the progress of the works.

When will they be delivered?

We have the particularity of delivering everything six months before the Games.

So all of what we have to build will be delivered by December 31, 2023, so that the Cojo can take ownership of it.

For example, that the teams put the beds in the Olympic Village, check that everything is working well so that the experience of the spectators and the athletes at the time of the Games is perfect.

We are well on schedule, we will deliver serenely at the end of the year.

You have nevertheless had delays on certain sites, in particular the Arena at the Porte de la Chapelle which is to host, among other events, badminton.

Since 2017, we have suffered a number of shocks: the Covid-19, with the closure of China, or the war in Ukraine.

Today we have overcome all these shocks.

But some projects took a few weeks or months off.

Thus the Arena, Porte de la Chapelle, which was to be delivered in the fall of 2023, will be delivered in December 2023, due to a problem of availability of Ukrainian steel to build the main framework.

So for the Games, there is no delay compared to the initial schedule.

With all these imponderables (to which must be added the rise in the prices of raw materials and energy), have budgets been exceeded?

President Macron told us in 2017 that there would not be 1 euro of additional public money, excluding inflation.

And so, excluding inflation, we have had an exactly stable budget since 2017.

Have the problems of labor shortages had an effect on the wages of workers on construction sites?

We have not had a labor shortage.

It was one of the fears we had in 2017 and 2018, but today it hasn't been proven.

Companies that build, big or small, don't have a particular tension to recruit journeymen.

There were also problems of illegal work, with undocumented migrants working on construction sites?

Since 2018, we have passed a social charter which aims in particular to set an example on our sites in terms of administrative regularity of workers and companies and safety.

To monitor its proper application, there is in our board of directors, a union representative (Bernard Thibault, former secretary general of the CGT), and a representative of employers (Dominique Carlac'h, vice-president of Medef).

This charter is reflected in both preventive actions in relation to illegal work, a control component (more than one per day), and a repression component with the filing of complaints.

In June 2022, we terminated the market for one company.

And just 10 days ago, I filed a complaint about cases of irregular work on Solideo sites.

Another difficulty: the possibility of a heat wave during the Olympics.

The planned absence of air conditioning for athletes and accompanying persons is causing a lot of talk…

Since 2019, we announce the guarantee of a decrease of 6 degrees compared to the outside temperature.

This allows us without air conditioning to have an extraordinary carbon footprint, of less than 50%.

Afterwards, if the delegations deem that it is not enough, we can air-condition.

But the basic solution is not air-conditioned. 

What were the environmental requirements on these sites?

From the beginning, we were asked that all sites be demonstrative of French excellence in terms of construction, for example by reducing carbon emissions by 50%, for example, compared to conventional construction methods.

We have achieved it in

on 300,000 m2 without subsidies.

And if we can do it in this project with a very short time (6 years only), we could also do it in all the French prefectures.

So that forces the entire industrial sector to rethink its way of building, to use ultra-low-carbon concrete, to build all buildings under 28 meters in wood.

We made the construction take ten years ahead of schedule.

What will become of these books after the Olympics?

Many questions were asked after the Games in Athens and Rio where many facilities were finally abandoned.

In the context of the Paris Games, we first started from the needs of the territory, the political project supported by the elected officials to choose the place where we would put the Olympic village, where we would put the village of journalists, the five bridges we are building in Seine-Saint-Denis.

And everything is thought out for the legacy.

After the end of the Games, from September 2024, we come back for the last works and in the summer of 2025 everything we build will participate in the dynamics of the departments concerned.

And then, we don't just build new.

We are participating in the rehabilitation of the Grand Palais, we are doing improvement work on Roland-Garros.

Another major economic issue: the relationship with the smallest companies.

Commitments have been made to involve them in public procurement.

Were they really respected? 

In the charter, it is written that we must grant 25% of dedicated contracts to SMEs, which represents approximately 540 million euros dedicated to SMEs.

Today, this objective has been exceeded, while there is still a year of work left, not counting the adaptation work after the Games.

Today we have nearly 1,500 SMEs from 85 French departments working on the Olympic facilities.

It is a dynamic for an entire sector, both large groups but also ETIs (mid-sized companies), SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) and SSE structures (Social and Solidarity Economy).

And what about social inclusion goals?

We were asked that 10% of the hours worked be reserved for people far from employment, ie 2.4 million hours worked.

Today, we are at 1.6 million.

More than 2,400 people are beginning a path back to employment thanks to the Olympic structures.

It is a great collective pride.

►To listen: Eco from here eco from elsewhere - Paris 2024 Olympics: what bill, what legacy?

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