The Cork wastewater treatment and mud-recycling plant, located at Carrigrenan at the very tip of the verdant Little Island peninsula at the mouth of the Lee River and 15 kilometres east of Cork, was upgraded to serve a population of 250,000. The plant is the final component in the city’s water-sanitation network. VINCI Construction Grands Projets led the civil-engineering mandate that includes 16 hydraulic storage tanks, 10 reinforced-concrete transfer chambers, 7 buildings, 23,000 m3 of concrete, and 3,800 tonnes of steel. The plant was opened in January 2004.
Reconciling Londoners with a cleaner River Thames – that was a key challenge for the British capital. VINCI Construction Grands Projets contributed to this endeavour with a design-build project for a stormwater and sewage collection system between the Abbey Mills and Beckton pumping stations: the Lee Tunnel. The project called for the construction of a tunnel 6.9 kilometres long with an internal diameter of 7.2 metres. Located at a depth reaching 80 metres, it will reduce by half the 32 million cubic metres of wastewater poured into the Thames every year by collecting it at the source.
Naga Hammadi Dam, located 150 kilometres north of Luxor, is designed to replace an existing dam built early in the 20th century and provide irrigation to the Nile River Valley, regulate the flow of the river, and generate electrical power. This concrete gravity dam features two locks for river navigation and produces 64 megawatts of electricity thanks to four 16-megawatt turbines. To build Naga Hammadi, the Nile River had to be diverted for three years, and a total of 400,000 cubic metres of concrete was used at a monthly pace peaking at 30,000 cubic metres.
The Lesotho Highlands Water Project is a water and electrical power supply project implemented by the governments of Lesotho and South Africa to find new sources of supply to support development in both countries. This major undertaking is the largest water-transfer project ever launched in Africa. Our consortium was in charge of part of the project. Our work package included building hydraulic conduits 65 kilometres in total length and 5 metres in diameter, two water intake structures with siphons, and several shafts and installing a surge chamber.
In order to supply the City of Faisalabad with drinking water, we were mandated by Pakistan’s Water and Sanitation Agency to increase drinking-water production capacity, renovate, improve, and expand the supply and distribution network, and optimize network performance. As part of a public utility project to supply an entire section of the city with water, this new treatment plant is designed to operate 24/7.
VINCI Construction Grands Projets has participated in the modernisation of the Brussels South filtration plant, which was opened in 2000. The project, including the implementation of an entirely new water, sludge, and odour treatment equipment, is now able to significantly improve the quality of the water treated, especially on nitrogen and phosphorus, for 25% of the wastewater in the Brussels region.
VINCI Construction Grands Projets was mandated by Sri Lanka’s national agency for drinking water and sanitation to rehabilitate and expand the drinking-water treatment plant in Kantale. The project calls for the construction of a new 1,500-cubic-metre raw water storage tank, new water-treatment capacity equal to 18,000 cubic metres a day, and a new 1,500-cubic-metre tank to store treated water. The project also covers the rehabilitation of all structures and buildings in the existing plant, including replacing process, electromagnetic, and electrical equipment. Also included in this project are the development of two water intakes and raw-water pumping stations and supply and installation of the equipment for the treated-water pumping station. Finally, the project also covers automation of the treatment plant and pumping stations and supervision of the drinking-water distribution system as a whole for the region of Trincomalee.
As compared with the rest of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, the capital, is well-supplied in drinking water. However, this city with a population of 1.6 million is adversely impacted by uneven access to drinking water from one community to the next – a problem aggravated by its fast-paced population growth and industrial development. In response to this situation, the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority (PPWSA) decided, as part of its 2005-2020 Master Plan, to build a new treatment plant in Niroth to produce drinking water. The project includes a water-intake system in the Mekong River, a raw-water pumping station, a filtration facility, and a treatment plant that feeds potable water into the city’s distribution system. Given the project’s considerable scope, a decision was made to divide it into two phases, with each phase encompassing a capacity of 130,000 cubic metres a day. A call for tenders was issued for each phase, and VINCI Construction Grands Projets won the call for tenders for the second phase in 2014, one year after the entry into service of the initial phase.
As part of developments north of the city of Doha, the capital of Qatar, a consortium consisting of VINCI Construction Grands Projets, QDVC, and Entrepose Contracting was entrusted with the task of building the largest wastewater-pumping station in the Gulf States. The structure was designed to collect, raise, and convey wastewater from North Doha to a plant located some 20 kilometres to the north in the desert. The project included construction of a wastewater-pumping station with a capacity of 900,000 cubic metres a day as well as the supply and installation of pipes.
In 2011, ONEAD (Djibouti’s national water and sewerage authority) awarded a contract to VINCI Construction Grands Projets to rehabilitate and expand the drinking-water supply network in Djibouti. The project consisted in rehabilitating 36 wells, carrying out network segmentation by district, repairing leaks in defective equipment, installing 100 kilometres of HDPE pipes, and providing 2,000 connections. Following this initial phase and the client’s satisfaction, we were hired once again in 2015:
For the second phase which consisted of rehabilitating the drinking-water network and expanding it by 36 kilometres, building a semi-underground storage tank, and providing no fewer than 3,000 connections. This phase was designed to improve access to water in working-class neighbourhoods and newly developed urban areas.
For another contract for a project that was complementary to the second phase of the initial project; it consisted in expanding the main water-supply network by 25 kilometres, upgrading three water towers, implementing a telemetry system for the drinking-water segment of the network, and – on the sanitation side – rehabilitating 3 STEP and the open-air drainage channel.
