Week of 7 February
1. Royal guests, ministers and trade unions (UAE – Belgium)
Last week, the United Arab Emirates hosted a Belgian state visit, including King Philippe of Belgium, Queen Mathilde of Belgium, two Deputy Prime Ministers, and trade unions. During their visit, the King and Queen of course visited the Belgian pavilion and met with Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum and the Dubai authorities, as well as the management of BESIX Group! Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Pierre-Yves Dermagne, in charge of the Economy and Employment, also visited the Uptown Tower. During a reception on Saturday 5 February, which marked Belgium's Day at the World Expo, BESIX Group and the two main Belgian trade unions, the CSC-ACV and the FGTB-ABVV, officially handed over to the representatives of the Belgian Government their joint declaration calling on Belgium to support the recognition by the International Labour Organization (ILO) of health and safety at work as a fundamental right. They did this in the presence of the King, the Queen, and representatives of the ILO regional offices for the Arab States and the European Union and the Benelux countries. Congratulations and thanks to all our teams who mobilised to make this event a success for our group.
2. Pharaohs are almost ready (Egypt)
We are getting new images from Egypt, as beautiful and impressive as ever. The museum, which will be twice as big as the Louvres in Paris, should be able to be opened by the client, Egypt, as early as this year 2022. As the pictures show, the pharaohs are waiting for their first visitors! Amongst the latest works, the BESIX-Orascom teams are completing the installation of the Truck Scanning facilities at the entrance to the museum complex, an essential security measure. And at the Solar Boat building, which since August 2021 has housed the oldest intact ship in the world, the Khufu Solar Boat, façade work is underway. What an exceptional construction site!
3. Building bridges (Italy – Belgium)
Two similar operations have taken place over the last few days, some 1,060 kilometres apart as the crow flies. While our teams on the Brussels-Leuven cycling motorway were installing the second section of the bridge on the Brussels ring road, our team in Valfabbrica, in central Italy, was doing the same with the deck of a road bridge, one of the many civil structures of the project (which also includes a viaduct and the digging of two tunnels, one of which is over one and a half kilometres long). What these two operations also have in common is that excellent preparation of these delicate operations made them a great success in both cases. Well done to our teams! (Please note that the picture below with a grey sky, for once, does not come from Belgium but from Italy...)
4. The relentless pace of Nachtigal (Cameroon)
It is always a pleasure to see the progress on the Nachtigal hydroelectric project in Cameroon. The photos below show the ongoing work on the dam intake canal and the power plant area, where the locations for the penstocks and turbines are clearly visible. Once completed, Nachtigal will produce one third of Cameroon's electricity. Kudos to our colleagues: it would be difficult to imagine a more comprehensive construction site in terms of the diversity of expertise required, and of such an extraordinary scale.
And then this... “It might as well be said” (Belgium)
It may not be much. In this picture, a BESIX Infra worker helps an elderly person across the construction site to the opposite pavement, in Wemmel. Respect for people living near our construction sites often go unnoticed, but it is of course fundamental. It even happens that local people take the time to congratulate our teams. This was the case last week with BESIX Connect: “(…) A compliment to Besix Connect, which is laying fibre optic cable in our street (...) yesterday the pavement was opened and today everything was closed again, but even for that a small bridge was built in front of each door (...) Moreover, everyone was warned by a letter that the work was going to take place - thanks! When the job is well done, it might as well be said! (…)” Isn't it nice to work with good people?
