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Briefing:French bridgeelegance and the futureMichel Virlogeux FICE, FIStructEAssociate, Michel Virlogeux Consultant SARL, Bonnelles, France

Innovative and elegant bridges such as the Pont de Normandie and Millau Viaduct may be the last of their kind

in France. This is due to a combination of reduced funding, growing environmental pressures, delegated design

responsibility and decreasing central government involvement.

Over the last 30 or 40 years, in France many elegant and

sometimes audacious bridges have been built which have been

considered as among the most beautiful and innovative in the

world. The author, however, is not sure that this will still be the

case in the future, as the situation has radically changed.

Limiting the analysis to the period of the authors own

professional activity, bridge construction was dominated in

the 1970s and 1980s by the French government on one side, and

by some innovative and audacious contractors Campenon

Bernard, Bouygues, Dragages et Travaux Publics on the other.

Not to mention the French railways, the SNCF, which were

more concerned with structural safety and operating conditions.

The French Highway Administration, and more specifically the

director of highways (mainly Michel Feve and later Jean

Berthier), developed in the 1970s and 1980s a policy of innovation

and of architectural quality, with the strong support of the

technical service, the Setra, where the author had much liberty

under the direction of experienced and supportive engineers, such

as Marcel Huet, Maurice Lefranc, Jean Berthier and others. It

was possible to design arch bridges and cable-stayed bridges,

develop external prestressing and other innovative solutions, and

finally design the Normandie Bridge and the Millau Viaduct. At

the same time, the contracting companies had strong design teamsand brilliant engineers supported by their headquarters, such as

Jean Chaudesaigues, Jean Muller, Jacques Mathivat, Pierre

Richard and many others. They developed specific solutions

such as construction from precast segments, which is now

developed everywhere in the world and could take a decisive

part in the development of solutions initiated by the Setra, or in

their adaptation or transformation for a greater efficiency.

However, as already mentioned, times have changed radically.

Foremost, it should be noted that a large part of the necessary

infrastructure has now been built in our countries, and much

less will be built in the coming years. It is not necessary to add,in these times of deep financial crisis, that the governments in

Europe have no more money for large projects. This point will

be addressed later.

The first two factors of the evolution come from the main

French actors, the French government and the contractors.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, the technical role of the French

government has been progressively reduced. Today the Setra does

not design bridges as it used to, and the local civil services, which

have been concentrated from the departements to the regions,

generally no longer have responsibility for site supervision and

have lost a large part of their corresponding capacities. Indeed,

the Setra has moved from the Paris area to a small village,

1?5 hours away, losing most of the experienced engineers. Some

local authorities departements or cities developed technical

services to replace the lost capacity, and private design offices

Setec, Egis, Arcadis and Ingerop developed their activities, but

could not fully replace what has disappeared.

Some medium-sized companies aside, the contractors are now

concentrated in three major groups Vinci, Bouygues and

Eiffage. They have lost a large part of their design offices and,

correspondingly, their leading engineers and part of their

technical competence. They frequently work as assemblers,

leaving a large part of the real work to subcontractors. However,

at the same time at least for the three majors they developed a

large and fruitful concession activity, and now have great

financial power; they work worldwide, with subsidiary compa-

nies in many countries, and are among the strongest in the world.

In this situation the design of bridges is now more or less

divided into two extreme situations. Isolated bridges and

relatively small projects are developed by local authorities

cities ordepartements and are generally designed after design

competitions completely dominated by architects. This fre-

quently leads to expensive, structurally inefficient and some-

times ridiculous bridges. Many of the French architects have

never passed the level of arch bridges. No technical progress,

no brilliant structure, can come from this.

Owing to the lack of governmental money, large projects,which mainly concern high-speed railway tracks, are now

developed within concessions, or in a publicprivate process.

They are then developed in a completely opposite direction: the

Bridge Engineering

Volume 166 Issue BE1

Briefing: French bridge elegance and the

future

Virlogeux

Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers

Bridge Engineering 166 March 2013 Issue BE1

Pages 34 http://dx.doi.org/10.1680/bren.12.00007

Paper 1200007

Received 11/12/2010 Accepted 01/02/2012

Published online 22/11/2012

Keywords: bridges/government/infrastructure planning

ice | proceedings ICE Publishing: All rights reserved

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lowest possible cost. Except for very rare occasions such asfor the Bacalan Bastide Bridge in Bordeaux no serious

consideration can be given to bridge architecture against cost

and erection efficiency.

As a final note, the authorities in charge of site protection

generally consider that a new bridge is in essence an obstacle,

and they push to design a bridge which is not seen. This is

impossible, and leads to very poor designs which degrade the

sites. The authorities help all those who want to interfere and to

change the design, generally for the worse, to a more ordinaryone, losing the initial unity and elegance. This is why the author

fears that the French bridges built in the years to come will not

have the elegance of those erected these last 30 or 40 years, and

that his successors will not be invited to write about them.

The authors strong conviction is that a country cannot

develop a policy of innovation and of architectural quality

without a strong and qualified administration, supported by

the governmental authorities.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

To discuss this briefing, please email up to 500 words to

the editor at journals@ice.org.uk. Your contribution will

be forwarded to the author(s) for a reply and, if

considered appropriate by the editorial panel, will be

published as discussion in a future issue of the journal.

Proceedingsjournals rely entirely on contributions sent in

by civil engineering professionals, academics and stu-

dents. Papers should be 20005000 words long (briefing

papers should be 10002000 words long), with adequateillustrations and references. You can submit your paper

online via www.icevirtuallibrary.com/content/journals,

where you will also find detailed author guidelines.

Bridge Engineering

Volume 166 Issue BE1

Briefing: French bridge

elegance and the future

Virlogeux

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