From underground to organic market gardening: recycling excavated soil
Where Grand Paris Express worksites are concerned, Bouygues Travaux Publics Région Parisienne is seeking to give a new lease of life to excavated soil. A review of a circular-economy pilot project with the restructuring of an agricultural plot in partnership with the conurbation of Grand Paris Sud Seine-Essonne-Sénart and the municipality of Ris-Orangis.
Gender & urban planning: it’s time to get back to work
What if, beneath the apparent gender diversity, the playground reveals that urban space is far from egalitarian?
Towns and buildings desperately seeking biodiversity
UN experts have issued a chilling verdict: in cities and in the countryside, biodiversity is at death's door. The good news, as with climate change, is that it is not too late. Although natural areas remain the priority, urban planners and developers in the broad sense must learn to build, to rebuild cities and buildings that will let ecosystems flourish, where ecological continuity really comes into its own.
3 questions to Thomas Danel, a PhD student at Chaire Construction 4.0
Bouygues Construction and Centrale Lille formed Chaire Construction 4.0 in 2017. Its aim was to support the digitisation and industrialisation of the sector. Thomas Danel, a PhD student in this field, has been working on a prototype for a remote-controlled crane. He talked to us about his project.
Smiile, the revolution in inclusive refurbishment in the Smart City
Smiile is a way of pooling resources and neighbourhood networks on the scale of an apartment block, a neighbourhood or even a city. The solution is one of the services proposed in the WIZOM Réhabilitation 2018 offer by Bouygues Construction. It is a great example of the Group's collaboration with a ‘French tech’ start-up.
Be Issy: a convenient window onto the city
Whether reimagining the tripod shape to move proudly towards the traditional shape of the closed island, stepping back from the street , using curves to provide a maximum of natural light or working with materials to create pleasant, social spaces, the research and design work done here at Be Issy by the architects from PCA Stream is intended to improve the lives of the occupants.
LeanCo, the open innovation solution for democratising lean management
The Matching Up Challenge is back! This call for innovative projects ‘matches’ start-ups with Group employees. What's it like working with a start-up? Yolaine Perrot, Lean Management Director at Bouygues Construction and Xavier Motsch, the founder of LeanCo, tell us all about it.
Smart cities will have to be transparent and inclusive
More and more sensors and cameras are popping up in cities. So what is being done to protect people’s private lives?
Experiencing smart cities
Whether you call it a smart city, a connected city or, even better, a smart region, digitalisation is primarily all about improving and offering new services to citizens and then to the persons behind local policies in order to allow them to run the city more effectively.
Living labs are good for your health!
Do-it-yourself projects are good for your health. Specifically, they can help improve the lives of patients. That is how living labs can help the medical field. These are “third places” dedicated to innovation. Their methodology brings together ordinary citizens, public and private actors, aiming to test services, tools, and new uses in real life.
3D printing, a technology to serve humans and human art
With the aim of reducing occupational health risks on work sites, improving productivity and producing complex items, 3D printing, while still in its experimental stage, is taking the building sector into an industrialisation process that will result in some exceptional achievements. Technology to serve US, not vice-versa.
Interview of the month: Alain Hurel and Thomas Devallez
Alain Hurel and Thomas Devallez, the HR managers of the sea extension project in the port of Calais, share their experience with their joint job insertion efforts in the context of this construction site.
Medium-size cities: areas which stimulate the local economy
Do we necessarily need to live in a megacity to fully enjoy the modern economy?
Solar thermal energy: a world first in France
In Llo, a town in the Pyrenees mountains, France just installed a thermodynamic solar power plant.
Anticipating in construction for reversible and sustainable buildings
This is an entirely new approach to construction, a more ethical and sustainable one. It involves predicting changes in usage, and the reversibility of a building after construction The aim is to be able to change the building's purpose easily to accompany changes in lifestyle and in the regions themselves.
Robotics and virtual reality used for health and safety
Improving working conditions on sites with a system combining robotics and virtual reality. This is far from a fairy tale - this research and development programme will come into effect in 2020. The aim is to train employees to pick up the right habits, via a process that is both visual and tactile.
Monaco’s offshore extension: ecological engineering at the core of project design
Creating this 6-hectare offshore space between two reserves that are marine protected areas (the underwater reserve of Larvotto and the Spélugues coral reef), illustrates the particular care given to respecting the site’s biodiversity and attention paid to impacts arising from the worksite.
Interview of the month: Franck Moine
Franck Moine, CEO of Winnovation, tells us about this technology watch unit of the Bouygues Group
Morocco – future solar energy giant?
A few kilometres from Ouarzazate, in the heart of Morocco, is one of the world's five largest solar farms.
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Top of the month
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The Common Tower : A Technical First in France to Meet the Challenges of the Tour Alto !
Bouygues Bâtiment Ile-de-France, Parisian subsidiary of Bouygues Construction, is the first construction company in France to set up a common tower, which is on the Tour Alto construction site in La Défense.
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3 questions to Emna Attouri, PhD student at Chaire Construction 4.0
Cast in situ, precast twin walls, precast slabs, modular construction, 3D printing... how do you choose? This, in essence, is the research project being carried out by Emna Attouri, a PhD student participating in the Chaire Construction 4.0 research
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4 ways to transform cities into positive health regions!
A positive health region is an attractive region that makes living together and growing old more enjoyable. Real estate developers play a key role in creating them! Provided that they seize the right opportunities!
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Matching Up: three years of open innovation!
Matching Up has reached the three-year stage and more than ever the Bouygues Construction's open innovation programme aims to generate new ideas within the company, putting Group employees and start-ups in touch in order to design and create new projects together.
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Alternative solutions to resource scarcity: what are the options?
The energy transition to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 is underway, with its panoply of tools: batteries for electric vehicles, nuclear energy, LED lighting, wind turbines, solar panels, to list but a few. But there's a catch. Since these green technologies and energies require many minerals, they deplete global resources and pollute the environment.
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Everything you need to know about EPR in the construction
The AGEC law of 10 February 2020 on the fight against waste and the circular economy provides for the introduction of an "Extended Producer Responsibility" (EPR) channel to ensure the management of waste arising from the use of construction products and materials. Demolition, renovation, rehabilitation and new construction are all covered by this EPR scheme.
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What will tomorrow’s workplaces look like?
Bouygues Construction’s Foresight team, together with Astrées and Chronos, is conducting a forward-looking study on changes in working methods and their impact on workplaces. How will the offices, housing, third places and mobility spaces of tomorrow be designed, equipped and operated in order to address the needs of new ways of working? To answer this question, we held two multi-partner study workshops, on March 30 and May 27, 2021. We chose to bring together stakeholders from various fields of expertise, who will design and use the workplaces of the future: employers and social partners, promoters, operators, local authorities, digital transformation stakeholders, etc. The questions that arise today are truly central issues in skills covering real estate, human resources, digital tools and environmental responsibility. Let’s bring together the visions of these various stakeholders and devise scenarios for 2030!
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Interview with Martin Fisher
How has BIM tech improved productivity? What are its most innovative applications in construction? What can we expect from BIM in terms of Big Data? Martin Fisher, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, answers all our questions!
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When cities overheat
Urban overheating is becoming a recurring phenomenon, resulting from the cumulative effect of climate change and the Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon. Climate change is leading to an increase in the intensity and duration of heat waves (hot air masses causing high temperatures for several consecutive days) in different parts of the world. These meteorological phenomena themselves reinforce the UHI, a climatic effect causing a difference in temperature between the centre of urban areas and outlying or natural areas, which can be greater than 10 °C during heat waves. The effect is even more pronounced at night, when the heat stored by artificialised land and buildings is released into the air, keeping the temperature high. Faced with the various consequences (social, environmental, economic) and climate projections, local and regional authorities are now faced with the need to adapt their cities in order to combat this phenomenon. Below is an overview of the challenges and solutions.
