VINCI 2017 Innovation Awards: final prize list

8 December 2017 - Events - France

VINCI, which has for many years given priority to collaborative innovation, organises the VINCI Innovation Awards every two years. The competition is designed to showcase and speed up application of initiatives implemented by its employees on the ground. This year, 150 projects were rewarded in the regional competitions and 15 final prize-winners were designated during the final ceremony, illustrating VINCI’s capacity for initiative which is at the heart of the Group's entrepreneurial culture.

Too bold? Too creative? Too ambitious? You’ll enjoy working with VINCI, where innovation is encouraged in every shape and form, and lived as a real collaborative exercise. It helps the Group's companies progress every day in all aspects of their activity: the effective technical solutions and proposals they offer their clients, of course, but even more important, the safety of employees, and the efficiency of VINCI’s production processes and environmental and social responsibility.

Discover below the VINCI Innovation Awards final prize list!

GRAND PRIZE: Development of new flux oils
After lengthy development work done in partnership with the company Solvay, Eurovia developed a new range of petrochemical flux oils.

DISSEMINATION PRIZE: Static worksites on in-service roads
The Eurovia EJL agency in Woippy, Lorraine (France), having noted that the regulatory signage installed to alert vehicles travelling near roads worksites did not guarantee the safety of works teams or users, decided to deploy its own procedure in 2014. Awarded in the final heat of the VINCI 2015 Innovation Awards, it has been deployed since very rapidly within Eurovia.

DISSEMINATION PRIZE: City App
City App, developed by Citeos with Actemium Paris Transport (VINCI Energies), is a mobile application initially designed to facilitate maintenance of the public lighting network. It was awarded the Marketing and Services Prize in the final heat of the VINCI 2015 Innovation Awards, and has since been completed with new functionalities. It is now being disseminated across VINCI Group, notably Eurovia.

SAFETY PRIZE: Caviar®
A new truck, named Caviar®, made of a horizontal skip equipped with a hydraulic pusher for evacuating the materials, is designed to guarantee the safety of Eurovia’s employees working on road-repair works that involve replacing surface layers.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT PRIZE: A pioneering recycling process on motorways
The technical departments of the ASF network and Eurovia joined forces to trial second-generation recycling on a dense-traffic motorway section.

PARTNERS PRIZE: Sustainable synergies with no trucks
In the context of the 3.2 km tunnel for the underground section of the Nice light rail project digging, Eurovia Sud joined forces with Soletanche Bachy to work on a global truck-free service. The project was aimed to evacuate all the excavated materials by sea, ensure all the waste materials’ total traceability and then recycle them.

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION PRIZE: Every engineer an expert!
To improve the chances of resolving a technical problem as soon as it arises, Axians and Actemium (VINCI Energies) joined forces with the startup Fieldbit to develop a remote assistance service based on augmented reality.

BREAKTHROUGH INNOVATION PRIZE: The “Gripper” Hydrofraise®
After inventing the Hydrofraise® in the 1970s, which has become standard equipment for building special foundations, Soletanche Bachy (VINCI Construction) has developed the “Gripper” Hydrofraise®. It is a new tool to work in terrain composed of very hard rock without undue wear or breakages.

PROCESSES AND TECHNIQUES: ElevArch
A massive electrification of the rail network is under way in the United Kingdom. Some 500 masonry-arch bridges are too low to allow installation of the catenaries. To augment the height under the structure, Freyssinet and its partner Bill Harvey Associates devised a solution that entails raising the existing masonry arch.

MARKETING AND SERVICES PRIZE: See you later
To enhance passenger satisfaction and reduce stress for staff, two Aéroports de Lyon (VINCI Airports) employees, in liaison with government services, developed an alternative solution to destroying the objects.

EQUIPMENT AND TOOLS PRIZE: Dual-flow wagons
SNCF Réseau has launched a huge programme to modernise the Paris Region rail network. A large part of the works entails upgrading obsolescent tracks in a dense traffic environment. To minimise the impact of the worksites on train traffic, the contract imposed numerous challenges, that ETF successfully undertook. The teams devised a new method for renovating the tracks. The solution consisted, in particular, of adapting the works-trains to the special constraints of this dense environment.

MANAGEMENT PRIZE: I Sense
ANA (VINCI Airports) has developed a solution for managing passenger flows, in partnership with Thales Portugal.
I-Sense offers a real-time image of the dynamics of occupation of a space and the movements of the people in it.
I-Sense has enabled ANA and Lisbon Airport Stakeholders to reduce waiting times by 20%.

SPECIAL “OUR FAVORITE” PRIZE: Compilot
Supported by his management and by a non-profit group and prevention agencies, François Morel, team foreman with GTM Ouest (VINCI Construction France), designed a device based on a portable Bluetooth beacon (Compilot). It enables him today to communicate more easily with his colleagues, and in the future to guarantee more safety on sites for other hearing-impaired people.

SPECIAL “OUR FAVORITE” PRIZE: Digital Worksite Totem
VINCI Construction France’s teams developed a tool for consulting digital plans that responds to all the constraints of use on the worksite. The Digital Worksite Totem is like an open-air office for front-line workers. Compatible with BIM, it allows consultation by all players of 2D and 3D plans with the guarantee of them being the latest version.

STUDENTS PRIZE: Wind my Roof
A team of students at the École des Ponts ParisTech conceived an innovative solutions for harvesting facade wind. It takes the form of small, horizontal wind turbines set in rectangular pods. The compact modules are designed to attenuate the noise of the blades and fit harmoniously into the urban landscape.