The two 120m-long, 1,400t TBMs will begin arriving at the Val de Fontenay station worksite from September, where they will be assembled ahead of the start of tunnelling in 2027. Each machine will excavate a tunnel with an excavation diameter of 9.87m.

The first TBM is scheduled to launch in late January 2027 from Val de Fontenay towards Champigny Centre, driving approximately 6km through the future Nogent–Le Perreux and Champigny Centre stations before reaching the Salengro structure.

A second TBM is due to begin work in late May 2027, driving towards the Rosny Bois-Perrier tunnel portal. After completing its first drive, the machine will be dismantled, transferred to the Rosny operations centre and reassembled to undertake a second drive towards the Rosny Bois-Perrier entrance structure.

The new machines are identical in design to the EPBM Rita, which began excavating another section of Line 15 East from Bobigny in May this year. Rita is driving a 5.2km tunnel between the Normandie-Niémen launch structure and the Marcel Dassault structure in Bondy.

The latest milestone forms part of Eiffage’s €2.54bn design-and-build contract for the Bobigny–Champigny Centre section of Line 15 East. The contract includes construction of 17km of tunnel, six new underground stations, 15 service structures, two tunnel portal structures and the Rosny operations centre, together with railway systems and track installation. Eiffage is delivering the works in partnership with Demathieu Bard, Setec and Arcadis.

Line 15 East is the final section of the orbital Line 15 on the Grand Paris Express network. The 23km fully automated metro line will link Saint-Denis Pleyel with Champigny Centre via 12 new stations, providing direct suburb-to-suburb connections and carrying an estimated 450,000 passengers a day when it opens, currently targeted for 2031.