PARIS — It’s 8 a.m. at the Place d’Italie in southeastern Paris. High above the multicolored tower overlooking the Italie2 shopping center, three men cling to a wire, gliding along the metal structure: a high-wire act between sky and city.
The men are what are commonly called “rope access technicians,” employed by the French company Alpinistes Accès Services.
They’re neither tightrope walkers nor acrobats, but professional workers who renovate hard-to-reach parts of buildings. Their daily routine includes changing a window, suspended from the 179-meter (587-foot) tower that is headquarters of the French energy giant TotalEnergies, cleaning the blades of a wind turbine or inspecting the Millau Viaduct, the world’s tallest bridge in southern France. The work comes with the added bonus of that intoxicating feeling of having an extra breath of life.
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Harnessed from head to toe like mountaineers, 32-year-old Mathieu Bonamy and his team are on a mission to repaint the frame of the Italie2 sculpture on the Parisian building. Sitting on the seat of his harness above a void more than 80 meters (262 feet) high, this rope access technician since 2013 talks about his “office in the sky” with an enthusiasm that never wavers.
“When you love this job, you’re ready to fight to participate on such a complex project,” Bonamy explains, as he gestures toward the city unfurling below.
At 54, Luc Boisnard, belongs to the generation that created the profession in the 1980s. Back then, they were all mountain guides or cavers. Now, president of the French rope access federation, he remembers their first interventions on construction sites. “At first, other workers sneered at us, and we had to fight to gain legitimacy,” he recalls.
Today, there are 16,000 rope access technicians in France, paid monthly salaries between 1,800 euros net for a beginner and 3,000 euros for an experienced worker, with some 800 companies in the field.
The Notre Dame restoration project has drawn attention to the rope workers across France: “Companies have sprung up like mushrooms, and competition is fierce,” Bonamy said.
Independent spirit
“You have to have the mentality of a top-level athlete, which is why turnover is quite high: every two years,” says Bonamy.
For Jarnias boss Xavier Rodriguez, 44, the best was mixed with the worst when he worked on the Eiffel Tower in 2012. “It was so cold that the tar we put on the pipes froze,” he recalls, before recalling with delight that every night for two years, he watch the capital wake up below him.
In the early 1980s, we worked without helmets.
“I’d take the time to drink a cup of coffee, sometimes perched 300 meters [984 feet] above the ground,” he recalled.”I had the incredible good fortune to see all of Paris.”
“In the early 1980s, we worked without helmets and harnessed with no chest straps, just leg straps,” recalls Ludovic Petit, owner of Alpinistes Accès Services. Since then, safety has evolved drastically, and today accidents are no more frequent than on a conventional building site.
The prerequisite for becoming a rope access technician is the Level 1 Professional Qualification Certificate (CQP1), an initial five-week training course at one of France’s 20 accredited centers. After that, these professionals specialize in urban, industrial or natural sites.
Safety first
Although technicians in urban settings mainly work at construction sites, they are also found in the events sector. Guérin Chatenet, 38, a rope access technician at Jarnias, will remember for the rest of his life the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, when he secured Céline Dion just before she sang “Hymne à l’amour.”
“Under her white dress, we equipped her with a harness held in place by a lifeline, a cable that attached her to the structure on the second floor of the Eiffel Tower,” Chatenet says.
Today, anyone can set up a rope access business.
The riskiest interventions remain those carried out in natural environments. Cyrill Kettenbach, 29, now a rope access technician at AAS, began his career with a two-year assignment in the Alps mountain range. “We drilled into the cliffs to install protective fences, but the main danger lay in the instability of the terrain,” says Kettenbach, who trained to be a butcher.
Toward market concentration
In addition to prestigious construction sites, rope access technicians also do everyday work on residential buildings. In the courtyard of a seven-story building in Courbevoie, to the west of Paris, three men from Abside are suspended from the roof by a wire. Their mission is to repair and repaint the concrete that has burst on the balconies.
“We get paid to work in places where people pay to go,” says Samuel de Carvalho, 33, before rappelling down the façade.
While there is a multitude of one-man businesses, a few large companies occupy the market. Such is the case of Jarnias, whose sales were fluctuating between 60 and 70 million euros at the end of 2024.
But Luc Boisnard notes that many of his employees have left to set up their own businesses, which represents around 30 million euros in sales. Indeed, today, anyone can set up a rope access business. That is the Achilles heel of the profession. The idea, therefore, is to put a greater emphasis on safety. “That’s why we’re currently working on mandatory certification for any company wishing to operate as a rope access technician,” Boisnard says.
