Main contracts awarded in France for Lyon-Turin baseline railway

Main works awards for Lyon-Turin base rail line

7 Jul 2020

TunnelTalk reporting

Three main excavation contracts in the French sector are awarded for continuing construction of the 57.5km Mont Cenis baseline railway of the new 270km Lyon-Turin link between France and Italy. In an online press event, officials of TELT, the French-Italian company in charge of the cross-border bi-national base tunnel, announced the consortia selected to complete more than €3 billion of the construction work (Fig 1 and Table 1).

Eight TBMs, six on the French side and two on the Italian side, and extensive drill+blast and excavator works will complete the project that comprises twin running tunnels, four access adits, 204 cross passages at 333m intervals, two ventilation/emergency stations, four deep ventilation shafts, and other associated underground adits, caverns, chambers and connections.

Table 1. Main construction contracts and their awards L3 Base Tunnel - France Section Saint-Julien-Montdenis and Saint-Martin-La-Porte Award value €228 million Length 3km twin tube plus cross passages Construction time 70 months L2 Base Tunnel - France Section Saint-Martin-La-Porte/La Praz to Modane Award Value €1.43 billion Length 23km twin tube plus cross passages Construction time 65 months L1 Base Tunnel - France Section Villarodin-Bourget/Modane to border with Italy Award Value €1.47 billion Length 22km twin tube plus cross passages Construction time

Implenia Suisse (Lead) Imprlenia France / NGE / Itinera / Rizzani de Eccher

Vinci Grands Projets (Lead) Dodin Campenon Bernard / Vinci France TP Lyon / Webuild

Eiffage Génie Civil (Lead) Spie Batignolles / Ghella / Cogeis

72 months

L1 Base Tunnel - Italy Section Chiomonte – Susa Approx Value €1 billion Length 12.5km twin tunnels Construction time 108 months

In procurement

The largest of the three contracts awarded is Lot 1 for the 22km of twin tunnels an associated works between the existing VillarodinBourget/ Modane adit and the border with Italy. Awarded to the Eiffage/ Spie Batignolles/Ghella/Cog eis consortium, the €1.47 billion, contract will complete two TBM heading east towards Italy and conventional and drill+blast excavation for headings west towards Lyon. With a 72-month duration, the contact includes the Modane safety station, cross passages every 333m for maintenance and

safety, and all the niches and transverse tunnels needed for underground operation and safety.

The 65-month Lot 2 contract for the 23km section between SaintMartin-la-Porte/La Praz and Modane is awarded to the Vinci/Dodin Campenon Bernard/Webuild consortium for €1.43 billion. The works continue the earlier excavation by the first main line TBM on the project that completed its 9km drive for the south tube section of the project from the Saint-Martin-la-Porte to La Praz adit. The 11.25m diameter hard rock single shield NFM TBM Fig 2. Route of the new 270km long Lyon-Turin railway began the segmentally lined advanced geological exploration heading in 2016 and broke through for recovery via the La Praz adit in early 2021. A remaining 1.4km section on the south tube was excavated by a consortium led by Spie Batignolles using conventional methods through a reach of poor geological conditions. Fiberglass and self-drilling anchor bolts were used to stabilise the excavation rounds and the advancing faces.

The parallel north TBM running tunnel will be excavated under the new contract together with another two TBMs deployed to excavate the 12.2km length from the La Praz adit to Modane. The more geologically complex sections will be excavated using traditional hydraulic breaker and/or drill+blast. The La Praz safety station, plus the cross passages and technical rooms, niches and tunnels for operation and safety will also to be built in this lot.

Lot 3 is a 70-month contract with a tender value of €228 million and awarded to the Implenia/NGE/Itinera/Rizzani de Eccher consortium for a 3km section of twin tube drill+blast and open-face excavation from the Saint-Martin-la-Porte adit to the Saint-Julien-Montdenis French. The scope includes the cross passages and additional works for the VillardClément portal section between the cut-and-cover portal built under an earlier contract headed by Bouygues and the entrance into the mountain to the east. The cover-slab supports the existing motorway that moved back to its initial location in Autumn 2020. Earlier open cut excavation of this section junctioned with the Saint-Julien-Montdenis exploratory shaft built between 1996 and 1998 by Sotrabas on behalf of Alpetunnel that represents the first real exploratory work carried out for the project. About 113km of exploratory surveys and core drilling in Italy and France has also been carried out.

In the coming months, the Italian lot, worth about €1 billion, will be awarded for excavation of the 12.5km twin running tunnels from the international border line to the Italian portal at Susa. This section will use another set of TBM bringing the total number of TBMs on the project to eight. This is the only section of the new Mont Cenis base rail tunnel with a third smaller diameter exploratory/service tunnel. Where design of the current Brenner base railway line between Austria and Italy, and the Channel Tunnel undersea rail link between the UK and France before it, is based on including an advance smaller diameter exploratory, service, maintenance, and drainage tunnel between and below the main running tunnels, Mount Cenis and the St Gotthard railway baseline project in Switzerland before it, decided to forego to exploratory/service tunnel concept.

Award of the three main contracts on the French side of the bi-national link builds on the earlier works that have completed a total of 30km of excavation, representing more than 18% of the total 162km planned for the project. Two additional contracts are currently advancing, one in France and the other in Italy.

On the Italian side, the Chiomonte construction site is supporting excavation of 23 niches in the La Maddalena exploratory tunnel to prepare it as a main construction adit of the Italian main line excavation contract and allow for the passing of construction vehicles within adit. The small cross section La Maddalena adit was pressed into service as a main construction access adit after protests ruled out the use of the Susa portal as the main construction access for the Italian section of the project. The tender for the construction of the niches was awarded in December 2019 to a JV comprising Webuild, CSC, Vinci Construction and Dodin Campenon Bernard. The Maddalena adit will subsequently be used as a permanent service tunnel and ventilation structure.

In July 2020, a €220 million contract was awarded to a consortium led by Vinci Construction with Dodin Campenon Bernard, Bergteamet and Webuild to excavate four ventilation shafts at the Villarodin-Bourget-Modane station.

The500m deep x 5.2m diameter shafts will be excavated as raise bores. Also in the contract is excavation of the seven caverns of up to 22m high x 23m wide that will be used for assembly of the reaming TBM drives that will

head east towards Italy, one from the Saint-Martin-la-Porte adit and a pair each from the La Praz, Modane and La Maddalena adits.

The Lyon-Turin railway line represents the primary section of the Mediterranean Corridor, the TEN-T European rail network axis to cross the Alps at train speeds of 220km/hr for passengers and 120km/hr for freight and removing more than a million lorries/year from the Alpine roads. The 57.5km long Mont Cenis base tunnel on the route will be one of the longest in the world and is co-financed by the European Union, Italy and France. During the tender process of the three contracts, and in the context of the pandemic, virtual online technologies were able to deal with the complexity of evaluating almost 30,000 documents between June 2020 and May 2021 by a team of 70 people.

In the evaluations, the economic criterion was flanked by a technical criterion that first of all assessed the quality of the proposed solutions: the enterprise consortia presented efficient programmes from the point of view of implementation time, environmental protection and employment inclusion. The companies, all of which are certified from an energy and environmental point of view, have made a special commitment to environmental protection during the works and to the use of clean energy and biofuels, with nearly 100% green energy construction sites.

Environmental controls at the construction areas are undertaken constantly, with daily measurements of 135 parameters, from water and air quality to the protection of flora and fauna. At the peak work on the project will employ approximately 8,000 direct and indirect workers.

In her statement, the European Union Coordinator for the Mediterranean Corridor Iveta Radičová thanked both supporters and opponents of the project alike saying that debate and comments about the doubts and fears surrounding these mega projects are all part of the common effort. “All comments and all opposition were taken seriously. They were all part of the project evaluation and became part of the process to address the risks involved, from the social, construction and environmental points of view.”

TELT President, Hubert du Mesnil said: “Award of these three major contracts represents a decisive step in the construction of the Lyon-Turin base tunnel. It is fully consistent with the objectives of promotion of rail transport, supported by the European Union, and it contributes to the policies led by our two States, France and Italy.”

TELT General Director, Mario Virano commented: “The milestone reached today is extremely important for at least two reasons: firstly, because just two years ago the project, even though it was moving forward, seemed at risk of being stopped; and secondly, because it is a major achievement to have completed the crucial part of the tender process in the midst of the pandemic. The awards will quickly translate into work on the construction sites and all under the banner of sustainability, a fundamental element that has been a significant feature of the calls for tender, to which the candidate groups have responded with equally fundamental proposals. The companies that have taken part in the tenders represent the best that the sector's business has to offer at international level, with 21 companies from 4 countries taking part. Our appreciation goes not only to the winning companies, but also to the entire range of candidates.” []