Eiffage has joined the race along with British company Balfour Beatty after the deadline was extended from last Thursday (April 19) to Monday, Construction News reports today.

 

They join a field which already included Germany's Hochtief and Ardmore, a small British company run by a pair of Irish brothers.

 

Bouygues, another French company, are believed to withdrawn at the last moment.

 

Eiffage was formed in 1992 through amalgamation of several businesses: Fougerolle (founded 1844), Quillery (founded 1863), Beugnet (founded 1871) and La Societe Auxiliaire d' Enterprises Electriques et de Travaux Public, better known as SAE (founded in 1924).

 

The group has roots in the work of Gustave Eiffel who built the Eiffel Tower landmark in Paris because it owns a subsidiary that originated with Eiffel.

 

The Eiffel Tower is today the most  visited monument in the world

 

In 2005, the last time figures are available for, 6.4 million people visited the tower in 2005 and more than 200 million since its construction in 1887.

 

The company also built the Millau Viaduct, a cable-stayed road brigde that spans the valley of the River Tarn near Millau in Southern France, which was designed by Sir Norman Foster, the architect responsible for the new Wembley Stadium, which will stage the semi-finals and finals of the Olympic football tournament in 2012.

 

Eiffage, the the third-biggest civil engineering construction group in France and the sixth-biggest in Europe, is currently building the Perpignan-Figueras high-speed railway line from Southern France into Northern Spain, which is due to be opened in 2009.

 

Balfour Beatty's late entry into the field ensures that at least one major British construction company is involved.

 

They were overlooked for the role of the Olympic Delivery Partner when their joint bid with AMEC and and Jacobs was overlooked in favour of CLM, whose constortium included Laing O'Rourke.

 

It had been widely reported that they would not be interested in building the Aquatics Centre because they were concentrating on building the main press centre.

 

The ODA are refusing to put a price on the Aquatics Centre project but it is expected to cost between £75 million and £100 million.