Material supplies ensured until the end of the year for the Olympic Village construction site

During a visit to this huge construction site in Saint-Denis, Nicolas Ferrand took stock as the war in Ukraine and the Covid in China are causing shortages and soaring prices in the building industry.

"We had a moment of cold sweat, in March until mid-April, when builders suddenly started telling us: We no longer have visibility on the availability of materials", he said. said, citing steel, wood, locksmiths .... "With one of the builders, the suppliers denounced the contracts", he even explained.

But, he added, "for three weeks, the message has been that a priori we have no supply subject by the end of the year".

The Olympic Village, the main structure built for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games which will then be transformed into a residential area, must be finished at the end of 2023. The site is running "five days a week and occasionally on Saturdays until 15 p.m.". "We should be able to deliver everything at the end of 2023", he assured, a priori without resorting to Sunday work.

But, "we have cost issues," he added. He had already warned on February 16 that the sites would be affected by inflation but not by intrinsic additional costs, ensuring that he was "in the envelope in euros 2016 excluding taxes", he said. "We keep this commitment," he said again on Monday.

In current euros, on the other hand, the village will cost more due to inflation. It is for this reason that Solideo had revised its budget in July 2021 by 4 billion in current euros. The public part had been increased by 175 million euros to increase it from 1,38 billion to 1,55 billion euros.

Mr. Ferrand added that alternatives to the use of certain materials had been considered at the end of March, but that they had been abandoned when the vagueness over supplies dissipated.

In passing, he slipped that the bridge planned in stamped concrete, above the Saint-Denis canal in Aubervilliers, would not ultimately be built in this innovative way, after the failure of two prototypes. It will be constructed in a conventional manner.