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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Innovation at the heart of Bouygues Construction’s new project
Bouygues UK, subsidiary of Bouygues Construction, was awarded the construction of an iconic project for Keele University in the Midlands – the Smart Innovation Hub project.
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Open Data, at the heart of local government strategy
Seen as the new "black gold" of our society, data, and particularly the use of data, is central to the strategy of organisations, services and, more recently, local government.
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The Greencity eco-neighbourhood is coming to life
Building work began on Greencity exactly two years ago. Today, the neighbourhood is coming to life. Residents have taken over the first homes in the eco-neighbourhood located to the south of Zurich in Switzerland.
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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.
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Real estate: Rennes trials the “Bail Réel Solidaire” leasehold arrangement
Purchase housing without paying for the land it stands on. Savings of between 20 and 50% are now possible thanks to the French “bail réel solidaire” leasehold arrangement provided for by the ALUR law and specified late last year by the ELAN law
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Construction Industry: Together, we are stronger!
Bouygues Construction joined Construct Lab in July. This group of construction and public works firms fixes frequent problems in these sectors, and start-up companies apply solutions. Julien Bourcerie, Open Innovation Manager for Bouygues Construction, on “collective intelligence” in construction.
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Interview of the month: Alexandre Bouvry
Alexandre Bouvry, CATALPA Project Director at Bouygues Entreprises France-Europe, tells us about a sustainable wood-frame modular project that's being built for the French Defence Infrastructure Service.
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Interview with Mohamed Al-Hussein
Dr. Al-Hussein’s research has proffered a number of contributions to the industrialization of the building construction process through the development of modular and offsite construction technologies. He's telling us about it!
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Mutualization: a future solution to save 20% of space in towns?
To tackle the problem of urban sprawl, several initiatives are emerging in favour of a “shared town” in which buildings and urban spaces are mutualized for different uses. A rationale that could allow for saving space and inventing new ways of living together.
