Partnerships and business chairs

Partnership with the Humanité & Biodiversité association

Unbreakable bonds between humanity and biodiversity

The main object of Humanité & Biodiversité is to strengthen everybody's perception and awareness of the synergies and unbreakable links between humanity and biodiversity. The association works for the conservation of diversity of living things and their freedom to evolve. It also seeks to encourage all business sectors to take account of biodiversity in economic and social terms.

Promoting biodiversity with economic stakeholders

That's why Humanité & Biodiversité is developing dialogue with organisations that have an effect on society, especially in the business, social enterprise and community sectors, because they have an important role in incorporating biodiversity issues into society. In this regard, it seems essential for them to work with a business like ECT and to participate in its corporate goal.

The purpose of the discussions between ECT and Humanité & Biodiversité is to create a charter. This charter will set out how, through its activities and its projects, ECT can achieve more and better for biodiversity. We want to develop general principles for our operations that take account of different types of environment and the conservation of habitats of protected species.

Partnership with the French national landscaping school and creation of the "Earth and Landscape" chair

ECT has signed a partnership agreement with the French national landscaping school, the ENSP or École Nationale Supérieure de Paysage at Versailles. This partnership allows ECT to endow a new business chair, "Terres et Paysage" or "Earth and Landscape".

Exploring the interaction between landscape and excavated soil

The partnership between ENSP and ECT arises from one key fact: Every year, nearly 15 million cubic metres of earth are excavated in the Île-de-France region as a result of building construction and public works for infrastructure projects. It's a sign of strong economic growth and the development of major projects in the region of the capital.

Locally, however, attitudes to the reception of inert soil remain ambivalent. This is the context of the "Earth and Landscape" business chair. Its agenda is to explore the links between the "resource" of inert soil and the "landscape". It has multiple objectives: To carry out projects, to capitalise on experience, disseminate knowledge and promote developments for the public.

New landscapes of 'made hills'

The ENSP and ECT are partners for the long term in reflections on new landscapes created by the re-use of soil.

Since 2017, as part of a Regional Educational Workshop, the students of the ENSP at Versailles have been working on a project around the hill called the 'colline d’Élancourt'. This will be the site for the cross-country events of the 2024 Olympic Games. The project has two phases: First the Games themselves, then the permanent existence of an urban landscape park.

Find out more about the ENSP / ECT project

Partnership with the EIVP; endowment of the business chair entitled "Upcycling Inert Soil"

Partnership with the EIVP; endowment of the business chair entitled "Upcycling Inert Soil"

The EIVP (the City of Paris School for Engineers / École des Ingénieurs de la Ville de Paris) is a university for urban engineering. On 23 October 2018, ECT signed a sponsorship agreement with EIVP marking an important step in their close collaboration. To last for a period of 2 years, this partnership is for the creation of a teaching and research chair, "Valorisation des Terres Inertes", dedicated to upcycling inert soil from urban construction sites.

Training and research into excavated soil

This chair is to develop a centre of excellence and train engineers and researchers at a high level. The chair, with a multidisciplinary approach, will be for training and research into the re-use of soil excavated in large urban areas.

What do ECT and the EIVP want to achieve? They want to expand research, expertise and the dissemination of knowledge and best practice both in France and internationally, especially in these two areas :

• • Environmental engineering relating to the management of excavated soil from the construction & public works sector, and the requirement for traceability
  • The field of designing and carrying out land-use developments that give the benefit of value-added to the regions and to their users.

Objective no. 1 - Training

The chair will make it possible for ECT's engineers and researchers, as well as international experts, to have input into the Engineering degree course as well as into EIVP's programme of continuing professional development. The chair is organising a conference for spring 2019. It will be dedicated to the issues relating to the re-use of soil from the construction sites of cities around the world. It will be prepared by a scientific committee chaired by Antoine Grumbach and will bring together people who are well known in this field.

Objective no. 2 - Innovating

The chair raises the possibility of joint tenders for innovative national and European projects. Also, in the context of postgraduate training, the range of seminars on offer will be boosted in terms of the subjects of the chair, and research allocations and CIFREs (industrial agreements for training through research) could be offered on these topics. The chair will also expand the possibilities for "Study & Research" courses and thesis work for students in the 2nd and 3rd years of the engineering course.

9 and 10 April 2019: First conference organised by the EIVP and ECT on the theme "Earth in all its States" : Read more

For access to the page that the EIVP devotes to the chair of upcycling soil of urban construction sites, please click here