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• Stepping up synergies between academia, research and business to speed up transformation in the construction and infrastructure sectors.
• Pooling research capabilities and VINCI's business expertise to tackle the challenges arising from the ecological and digital transitions.
École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (ENPC-Institut Polytechnique de Paris) and the VINCI Group have entered into a strategic partnership to build skills and drive innovation aimed at tackling the challenges surrounding the ecological transition, namely sustainable mobility, the energy transition and urban development.
This partnership, which started up in early 2024, is strengthening synergies between ENPC's faculty and 12 research laboratories and VINCI's R&D teams. Its goal is to fast-track operational solution implementation and scale-up, through undertakings led by engineers who are familiar with the complex concerns facing today's world. It is also encouraging student entrepreneurship and collaborative innovation while challenging traditional models in order to modernise existing trades and invent the professions of the future.
The partnership is organised around five main focus areas:
• Learning: the partnership enhances engineering students' curricula (with lectures by VINCI Group engineers, on-site internships, supervised projects) and opens the door to jointly devising specialist master's level courses centred on emerging scientific fields, notably involving AI.
• Research and innovation: to address climate-related and industrial issues, the partnership is also reinforcing scientific collaboration between ENPC and VINCI, principally in the areas of low-carbon construction, smart infrastructure, urban resilience and AI applied to infrastructure construction and operation. It is an extension of the cooperation between VINCI's lab recherche environnement and ENPC's alumni network, aimed at spurring mutually beneficial projects.
• Entrepreneurship: Leonard, VINCI's innovation and foresight platform, works with a solid network of entrepreneurs and supports entrepreneurial initiatives within ENPC, providing methodological insight as well as matching student-entrepreneurs' projects with the Group's requirements.
• Professional integration: the partnership opens doors for young graduates at VINCI's various entities, tapping into the wide range of career paths and forward-looking skills available across the Group, and includes career guidance for young women, especially through mentoring.
• Conferences and public debate: the partnership includes plans to hold conferences that cross-fertilise scientific expertise and social and economic insight into the big issues in the construction and infrastructure sectors for example Décider Maintenant ("Decide Now") seminars bringing together researchers, policymakers and business players to inform public debate.
Pierre Anjolras, VINCI's Chief Operating Officer: "We speed up today the transformation of our trades, in order to achieve the VINCI Group's environmental and digital transition, and that way address the issues our companies face every day, as well as our customers' and our other stakeholders' expectations. The challenges today are so far-reaching and complex that we need to harness technical expertise as well as scientific research to tackle them. This agreement with ENPC, a world-class academic standard-setter, will enable us to take a new look at our construction processes all the way from design to execution, and at the way we operate infrastructure, then take them to the next level."
Anthony Briant, École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées' Director: "ENPC is the French school for the ecological transition and is constantly expanding its expertise in this field by fostering conversations between higher education, research and social and economic realities. It aims to equip engineers to be fully aware of the environmental and climate issues as well as of real-life problems, and to map out their own training path. The high academic standards at its 12 research laboratories also stem from its close connections with the industrial and urban development spheres. The strategic agreement we are entering into today with the VINCI Group will lead to substantive and constructive conversations that will enable our students, researchers and engineers to take action in shifting landscapes and bring about a more sustainable world."
About VINCI
VINCI is a world leader in concessions, energy solutions and construction, employing 285,000 people in more than 120 countries. We design, finance, build and operate infrastructure and facilities that help improve daily life and mobility for all. Because we believe in all-round performance, we are committed to operating in an environmentally, socially responsible and ethical manner. And because our projects are in the public interest, we consider that reaching out to all our stakeholders and engaging in dialogue with them is essential in the conduct of our business activities. Based on that approach, VINCI’s ambition is to create long-term value for its customers, shareholders, employees, partners and society in general.
About École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées
École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (ecoledesponts.fr), a leading French engineering school established in 1747, is training the future senior executives and researchers who will have to rise to the challenges associated with building the 21st century's sustainable society. Beyond civil engineering and urban development, the prime disciplines that have built its reputation for excellence, it is developing top-tier training and research programmes centred on ecological transition and social responsibility in a broad range of fields including cities and transport, mathematics, economy and finance, energy, mechanics and materials science. The school's 15 academic and research chairs are fully active on these fronts and consider scientific and technical issues as well as economic realities and social acceptability. ENPC is a member of Institut Polytechnique de Paris (IP Paris), a world-class science and technology institution encompassing École Polytechnique, ENSTA Paris, ENSAE Paris, Télécom Paris and Télécom SudParis. It is also a founding member of PSE-École d'Économie de Paris and of the European Engineering Learning Innovation and Science Alliance (EELISA), a consortium of 10 higher education institutions in 8 countries. It holds ISO 9001:2015 certification.
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