The building and construction sector is experiencing a major change in construction methods. This trend calls for a more systematic effort to reduce and avoid carbon emissions.
Eiffage is supporting this development by making a number of innovation mechanisms available to employees, both internally – a financial support fund for innovation, multidisciplinary working groups, a digital ideas box, a digital encyclopaedia of innovation – and externally, such as the Sekoya industrial club, which comprises a number of players in the Eiffage value chain and is dedicated to identifying innovative low-carbon solutions.
Sekoya
A low-carbon industrial club to shape the future of the construction sector
Designed in partnership with Impulse Partners, a specialist in innovation in construction, Sekoya is a platform dedicated to promoting low-carbon materials and processes. Comprising players from the private sector (Covivio, Gerflor, GRDF, Legrand, Saint-Gobain, Vicat) and public sector (GRDF, L'Union sociale pour l'habitat), as well as institutional and academic partners (CEEBIOS, CSTB), this French low-carbon industrial club aims to showcase the best solutions for the sustainable cities and infrastructures of tomorrow.
What are the objectives? Facilitating the identification of low-carbon solutions, encouraging interaction between all the players and forging special partnerships with all the players in the construction and public works sector (SMEs, suppliers, engaged financial institutions, start-ups, etc.), whose role is essential to the emergence of low-carbon, or even post-carbon, cities and infrastructures.
E-Face
This is a voluntary initiative by the Group to encourage the emergence of low-carbon projects across all its divisions.
Its principle: the E-Face fund finances the cost differential between innovative low-carbon solutions and conventional solutions. This financial support is granted on the basis of evidence of CO2 emission reductions, following the opinion of a cross-disciplinary committee.
Among the projects supported in 2023 is that of Eiffage Immobilier Belgique (Valens) for the installation of a renewable heat network to supply heat to 118 homes in the NovaCity II project in Anderlecht. This geothermal solution, offered as an alternative to gas heating, avoids almost 5,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent.
Since the launch of the E-Face fund in 2017, 20 projects have been supported and represent more than 13,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent avoided.
Seed'Innov
This financial scheme consists of co-financing the innovations driven by Eiffage's divisions by up to 50%.
This includes projects developed in-house, as well as those in partnership with start-ups from partner incubators or independent SMEs. This financial support is granted on the advice of a cross-disciplinary committee, which assesses the innovation's differentiating potential in terms of its commercial interest, replicability and market potential.
In 2023, the operation of the Seed'Innov fund has changed. In addition to the Seed'Innov Groupe fund, which focuses on stimulating innovation at the interface between business lines, employees can also raise funds specific to their division, ranging from 300,000 euros to up to 3 million euros, depending on the division.
The aim is to support innovations specific to their businesses, to increase the volume of innovation support, and to spread the innovation culture throughout all the Group's activities. The aim of this comprehensive system is to develop differentiating solutions within or at the interface of the business lines for the benefit of customers, while improving the capitalisation and sharing of best practices.
In 2024, the Construction division's Seed'Innov fund financed a number of innovative solutions ranging from construction with a reduced footprint to solutions to improve the uses by our occupants and workers.
Start.box
The idea behind this digital ideas box is to call on Group employees to submit an innovative proposal on a specific theme. At the end of a one- to three-month collection campaign, an internal panel selects the best ideas, which are then rewarded and implemented. Several major campaigns have been carried out on the themes of prevention and safety, the housing of the future and reuse.
Start'Lab
The laboratory is organised into focus groups and its mission is to analyse the development of growth markets for the Group's divisions. The aims are to create innovative, packaged solutions in just a few months, so that they can be brought to market quickly, and to enhance the Group's offering in cross-activity markets. Eiffage Construction is a stakeholder in a number of areas:
- industry of the future,
- eco-district "made by Eiffage",
- housing of the future,
- low-carbon materials,
- smart parking,
- artificial intelligence and data.
Introduced in 2022, the Start'lab Recyclage project concluded that there was a need to structure an offer around material recovery and reuse, in particular through in-house reuse and recycling programmes. The Eiffage Construction, Roads and Selective Deconstruction business lines are finding new synergies to reduce waste volumes and facilitate access to sources of reuse for the benefit of customers.
Innopédia®
A collaborative encyclopaedia of innovation, it is a platform for sharing and disseminating internal innovations, which is also open to external collaborations (open innovation). It contains all the information Group employees need to find a solution to test, a player to co-develop a project with, or a project to replicate.