Samuel Colin-Canivez, lead engineer for the Paris water system, stood in a 30m-deep concrete cavern as hundreds of construction workers were racing to finish the pharaonic project ahead of next year’s Olympic Games.
Their mission: build a 700-metre tunnel and a large storage tank to clean up the Seine so athletes can compete in it in swimming and triathlon events.
“It’s been a marathon, but we are on the last leg,” Colin-Canivez shouted over the noise of workers banging hammers to install a last section of barbed steel to reinforce the concrete below the tank’s floor. Construction started almost four years ago and is due to complete in spring at a cost of €90mn.