Thursday September 7th, 2017
Built in the port of Saint-Nazaire, Floatgen, France’s first floating wind turbine, has taken a new major step forward. The concrete foundation was floated on 23 August after a construction process which began in the autumn of 2016.
After installing the wind turbine’s mooring system off the coast of Le Croisic last July, the foundation took to the water, marking a new key stage in the project implemented by Ideol, the Ecole Centrale de Nantes and Bouygues Travaux Publics. The concrete foundation was tugged into the Forme Joubert Lock, a dry dock at the entrance to the port of Saint-Nazaire to be floated, a tricky technical operation to float off the floater from the three barges on which it had been built.
“Everything was placed in dry dock on concrete and wooden blocks which support the keel of a ship during dry construction. The barges were then filled with water to be sunk. When the lock was filled with water, the floater disengaged from its support”, explains Perceval Modiano, project manager at Bouygues Travaux Publics.
The imposing, 5,000-tonne concrete structure, 36 metres square by 9.5 metres high, will soon be accommodating a 2-MW wind turbine. The project’s next stage will be to mount the wind turbine’s tower, the turbine and its blades. The final unit will top out at over 80 metres.
By mid-October, it will be towed to the SEM-REV installation site, 22 km off the coast of Le Croisic for initial trials covering a period of 2 years.
Highlight of the worksite: “we have developed a lightweight, self-compacting type of concrete to minimise the weight of the structure and pour the concrete without vibrating it,” explains Régis Bigard, head of the Floatgen project with Bouygues Travaux Publics.
Health and safety is more of a priority than ever at Bouygues Construction, and effective safety measures are becoming even more important across all our construction sites. In light of this development, Bouygues Construction University has launched a training programme for team leaders.
"Our subsidiaries Bouygues Thai and Bouygues Energies & Services, in a joint venture with the local company McTric, have built four solar farms in Ayutthaya, 100km north of Bangkok,in Thailand. Back in pictures on this amazing project:
The Tour Alto is one of many prestigious high-rise buildings erected in La Défense and in other French cities.
Meet Emmanuel François, Chairman of the Smart Building Alliance (SBA).
The “Maison des femmes”, or “women’s home”, inaugurated in Saint-Denis at the beginning of July 2016 after a year of construction works, is finally ready to welcome and care for female victims of violence and mutilation. Here is a look back on this project led by a committed woman, the Doctor Ghada Hatem, and supported […]
YHNOVA, a social housing unit built using BatiPrint3D™, an innovative 3D printing technique, was opened on 21 March in Nantes. This Bouygues Construction R&D project is part of an experimental construction site run by Bouygues Bâtiment Grand Ouest.
After intriguing locals and music lovers for three years, the Seine Musicale is finally being unveiled. The new cultural centre of the Hauts-de-Seine department, which marks the renewal of the Ile Seguin, will be officially inaugurated on Saturday 22 April. Guided tour of this liner dedicated to all music genres, a real technical feat for […]
On 6 and 7 December, Bouygues Construction is organising the second edition of its mobility-focused Global Mobility forum. Interview with Jean-Manuel Soussan, Human ResourcesDirector, on mobility policy and the opportunities of this meeting for the company.
More and more sensors and cameras are popping up in cities. So what is being done to protect people’s private lives?
