The Technical Galleries Consolidation Project started in 2021 with the aim of renovating CERN’s technical galleries, which form a 14 km-long maze beneath the Meyrin and Prévessin sites, and to make the technical infrastructure more reliable and environmentally friendly while at the same time improving safety.

The 3D modelling campaign, which began in May 2021 as a prerequisite for the project, is already well underway: 5 km of galleries have already been scanned and half of them have been 3D-modelled. “The modelling phase represents an enormous amount of work which is completed with exemplary professionalism by the teams in charge”, says the project leader, Sébastien Evrard.

Currently, two pilot galleries are being consolidated: gallery 835 on the Meyrin site and gallery 818 on the Prévessin site. More than 125 tonnes of old piping and material have already been removed – 2.92 km of old piping have been dismantled and replaced by 1.57 km of new piping. Some 660 welds and 80 non-destructive tests so far have been performed. New circuits have been installed for heating, compressed air and drinking water, with the layout of the drinking water network in the West Area of the Meyrin site having been completely revised and optimised.

Several decabling campaigns have also taken place to dispose of many obsolete cables, about 48 km to date, including cables with incredibly large cross-sections (up to 11 cm!). Some civil engineering work has also been completed in the West Area of the Meyrin site (drain networks, equipment and personnel access, metallic structures).

The project was initially scheduled to take place over a period of 10 years; it will not take less time than that to renovate the 14 km of galleries which are so vital to the operation of the accelerator complex and CERN sites.

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For more information, read the article published in 2021 at the launch of the project.