Research & innovation

A research and innovation organisation that is both Group-wide and networked 

 The world of tomorrow offers an almost inexhaustible field of action, calling for innovative solutions that go beyond conventional responses. To find them, we need to harness all our creativity Group-wide, enlisting all our business lines and our full constellation of startups, research centres and other partners. On top of contributing to these Group-wide structures, our business lines also carry out work on specific innovations related to their activities.  

Group-wide platforms

Leonard

Leonard is VINCI’s foresight and innovation programme. In a rapidly changing world, it aims to respond to the great challenges facing our business lines. It brings together all the people working on the future of cities and regions, detecting new trends, identifying opportunities to grow and evolve and supporting innovative entrepreneurial projects, both in-house and from outside the Group. These projects can give birth to new activities or entities at VINCI and accelerate our business lines’ integration of the most innovative technologies.

La Fabrique de la Cité 

La Fabrique de la Cité, a think tank founded and supported by VINCI, is tasked with stimulating public debate on the major challenges in the transformation and development of cities and regions. With its interdisciplinary approach, La Fabrique brings together the experts involved in developing cities, in France and across the world, businesses, public authorities, scientific labs and non-profits, to discuss best practices in urban development and present novel ways of building and rebuilding cities.  

Lab recherche environnement  

Lab recherche environnement is the scientific partnership between VINCI and three engineering schools (Mines Paris Paris-PSL, École des Ponts ParisTech, AgroParisTech), in an approach based on scientific sponsorship. Since 2008, the schools’ research teams, in cooperation with our employees, design tools to reduce the environmental impact of buildings, neighbourhoods and infrastructure, focusing on three major research areas: energy efficiency, sustainable mobility and biodiversity in the city. The results of this research are made public and shared with the scientific community, but also with city and regional players and stakeholders to facilitate decision making and improve practices. VINCI employees work alongside researchers to identity, upstream, potential demonstrators among the Group’s projects that can provide suitable testing grounds. 

Innovation is central to our business lines

La Factory at VINCI Energies  

La Factory, VINCI Energies’ innovation model, is dedicated to convergence and innovation organised around ecosystems. It houses the business line’s brand management teams (Actemium, Axians, Citeos, Omexom, VINCI Facilities), service-sector teams, smart city teams and VINCI Energies’ development and innovation department. The goal is to provide its employees with a place for thinking, discussing and co-building the solutions of tomorrow with startups, partners and Group customers.

The Cyclope.ai startup at VINCI Autoroutes  

Cyclope.ai, a VINCI Autoroutes subsidiary specialising in artificial intelligence, designs and implements high-tech software solutions to serve road activities. The startup, which focuses on users’ needs, leverages its technical expertise in AI to create better managed, better shared and more sustainable road networks.

VINCI Concessions’ centres of excellence  

Thanks to its networked organisation, VINCI Concessions trials innovative solutions on the ground. The company, always on the lookout for new technological trends, collaborates with local and global innovation ecosystems, in partnership with startups and universities, to design the future of mobility.

Helping invent the world of tomorrow 

Our goal is, first, to foster emergence of the innovations that are already transforming the Group’s business activities and, secondly, to explore their long-term perspectives, particularly as concerns the environmental transition. Relying on the innovations developed by our business lines, we are already trialling the solutions and services that presage the world of tomorrow: a more sustainable world, where energy generation, storage and use will be rethought, where mobility will be reinvented and where we will see an ever greater number of new infrastructure assets to harvest, transport, store and process information.

Meeting the challenge of urban development

The number of people living in cities continues to increase. This concentration of populations in urban spaces drives the need for new housing, business facilities, water supplies, power grids and transport networks. For many years, urban sprawl was the only response to this huge influx of people, despite its many drawbacks: it entails sealing soil, gentrifies certain neighbourhoods and pushes workplaces further away from residential areas. To support urban development while avoiding sprawl and ensuring cities remain pleasant to live in, we need to rethink the question of higher density. Raising the height of the built environment or capitalising on underground spaces look like interesting solutions, given that available land has become scarce. The city of tomorrow also needs to create modular spaces that can be used to meet changing needs over time.  

Developing more sustainable mobility

The transport sector is under pressure to comply with the requirements imposed by the climate challenge. As one of the sectors emitting the highest levels of greenhouse gases, it needs to reinvent itself. How? By adapting the array of public transport options and encouraging carpooling and intermodal travel, while also tackling the challenge of logistics, parcel delivery and electric mobility.

Helping to preserve the environment  

The world of tomorrow demands both better management of resources and preservation of natural environments. This means adopting a circular economy approach but also a new way of thinking about the world around us, and in particular cities. They must embrace renaturing and become biodiversity spaces, thanks to such initiatives as development of green roofs and walls, together with cool islands.  

Increasing the energy performance of buildings and infrastructure   

With the effects of climate heating already being felt, it is urgent to develop solutions to both reduce CO₂ emissions and optimise the energy performance of facilities. A complete paradigm shift is required: infrastructure, roads, buildings, hitherto energy-passive or even energy-intensive, will have to produce energy themselves. The buildings of tomorrow must, for instance, be designed as energy hubs, generating their own energy and managing consumption through use of smart systems. Meanwhile, we need to find solutions for improving the energy performance of existing infrastructure.  

Harnessing digital innovation to transform our business activities  

The new digital technologies offer an opportunity to reduce the physical difficulties of our activities and deadlines, boost our creativity and increase our productivity. In the construction industry, for instance, use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) will become the new normal. BIM tools create 3D models of facilities and infrastructure on digital platforms, which the people designing, building and maintaining them share. The advantage of this solution is that it radically optimises design, construction and maintenance of the structures built.

Working towards the digital transition of our world  

Automation and big data processing, made possible by artificial intelligence, are no doubt revolutionary, allowing us to reinvent and enrich relations with our customers by offering them unique services that themselves lead to new practices and new modes of consumption. We are also developing solutions to build the smart, i.e. connected, buildings of tomorrow.