Grand Palais renovation
Four VINCI Energies business units worked on the renovation of the Grand Palais, an iconic site in the city of Paris.
Between 2022 and 2025, the Grand Palais was the site of a titanic renovation project. The project owner – Réunion des musées nationaux (RMN) – had a double objective: to host the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games under Europe’s largest glass roof, and to modernise the facilities, turning a new page in the history of this monument more than a century old.
Two groups of VINCI Energies business units were assigned to technical batches together worth more than €54 million. The plans included a complete overhaul of the electrical systems, installation of a Category-A fire safety system with thermal cameras, and renovation of the heating, ventilation and climate control (HVAC) equipment. All these installations are connected to a building automation system and hypervisor solution covering the site’s three buildings, which occupy a total of 72,000 sq. metres.
Three business units from VINCI Energies Building Solutions worked on the project: Cegelec Tertiaire IDF and Saga Tertiaire for the HVAC and plumbing batch, and Phibor Entreprises for the power supply and extra-low voltage batch. Citeos Grands Projets en IDF was responsible for interior and exterior architectural lighting. Around 400 people working for these business units installed a total 50 km of cable trays, 2,000 km of cables, 200 electrical cells and cabinets, 125 computing racks, and thousands of terminals, not to mention 35 km of mains power and sanitation networks.
“This isn’t the biggest project we’ve ever worked on, but it is the most complex,” says Patrick Pulcrano, Project Director at VINCI Energies, who has worked on massive projects from the DUO Towers in Paris to Paris La Défense Arena in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine).
“The project was divided into 86 batches, for the most part managed directly with the contractor,” says Mathieu Juin, Business Unit General Manager at Citeos Grands Projets en IDF, which was responsible for the monument’s architectural lighting. “We had to work in highly fragmented spaces, practically rubbing shoulders with dozens of trades and different companies.”
With technical difficulties and unexpected archaeological discoveries, the project frequently tested the teams’ ingenuity in surprising ways, but they continued to meet their deadlines. Their achievement earned the VINCI Energies teams a decoration from the Ministry of Culture – the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Photo: ©Raphaël Soret