After a year working as a design engineer at Ove Arup in London and RFR in Paris, Étienne Tricaud joined the Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer français (SNCF) as a project manager before taking charge of the SNCF Station Design Office.
In 1997, he founded AREP, within the SNCF group, with
Jean-Marie Duthilleul. He took over as General Manager, directing architecture, engineering and town planning activities,
and managed the design of major projects such as stations (TGV Méditerranéen, TGV Est, TGV Rhin-Rhône and major Parisian stations), public equipment and buildings, offices and businesses, studies of major urban developments, for the SNCF in France
and for public or private sector clients in France and around
the world. He was appointed President of the AREP group in 2012. He joined the AFALULA Agency in January 2019.