Faces of the CRL – Florent Detraux
Delivering the country’s largest infrastructure project takes some seriously talented people, so in this section “Faces of the CRL” we talk to some of City Rail Link’s best and brightest. This month we turn the spotlight Link Alliance’s Tunnel Manager Florent Detraux . Florent hails from France and has many year’s worth of tunnelling under his belt from projects all over the world.
Name: Florent Detraux
Age: 42 years
Suburb: Karaka, Auckland
How long have you been working with the Link Alliance?
Since June 2019. Before that I visited briefly for a workshop in March 2019 during the City Rail Link tender phase.
What is your role? Tunnel Manager
How do you do it?
My role consists of building a team of specialists to run in parallel the mined tunnel works and TBM works. Firstly, the role is started by selecting the best methodology to guide the designers and order the main plants and the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM). Following the order, plant and equipment needs are divided into sub-projects, which requires great involvement and engineering input to guide the suppliers to produce the right equipment to get all plants working together as initially intended.
Next, comes recruitment. We recruit a large workforce with a mix of experienced and newcomers who will all become tunneling specialists. We teach them by showing them tips and good lessons learn from previous projects. All these things help us to deliver the tunnels fully equipped and ready for railway system integration.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
To have the chance to learn continuously new techniques and fields. We also enjoy having the rare possibility to be innovative and try something new with the team and suppliers. By improving what you do each time, you have the ability to up skill all the team members and inspire them to carry out something challenging - meaning more involvement in the preparation and the associated learning curve.
What is the most challenging part?
The human factor. Due to the multi-cultural aspects of the project there are a lot of different people with a lot of valuable differences in many fields such as technical expertise, cultural behavior and previous project experiences. The challenge here is to align everybody with the superior common interest, building a world-class underground railway for Auckland.
What have been some of your previous jobs?
I travel around the world with my family at a regular pace of three years. I was plant manager in the first decade in France, Switzerland and Belgium. Here I worked in all the different civil aspects of tunneling; drilling, blasting and TBM work. After that, I went to the production side to be a Tunnel Director in France, Egypt and now in New Zealand, on railway system projects.
Aside from tunneling, I was owner verifier for a large project constructing a 300km high-speed train in France.
Previously, in Egypt, a challenging part of my job was being confronted with high levels of poverty and a different way of living for those who belonged to my company’s workforce – they were very hard and proud workers. It was difficult to work in a country where there was a hidden caste system, that human experience was very valuable and intense. The Egyptians were endearing, and I hope to have contributed for some of them a chance to make their life more enjoyable.
What are your hobbies outside work?
I go mountain biking and motorbiking as much as I can. Recently a bought a “young timer” car, which was my dream car to own as a teenager. I will refurbish it as new to be a legacy for my children and hopefully I will also transmit to them my passion for cars and motorbikes.
What are you looking forward to most about when the CRL is complete?
I hope to stay in New Zealand for one more project; I would like to have the opportunity to work on the tunnel crossing the Auckland harbor. If it happens, it would involve a TBM slurry and wider diameter expertise.