COMPASS: Please describe Bouygues and its sustainable development goals.
FABRICE BONNIFET: In its construction business, Bouygues employs more than 58,000 people and generates annual sales of around €13.4 billion [US$16.25 billion]. The company spans the entire construction industry value chain, including land management, design, building, assembly, maintenance, deconstruction and reuse. We are in 60 countries, building transport and energy infrastructure; housing; social, educational and healthcare facilities; industrial installations; and iconic landmark buildings.
We have an ambitious climate strategy underway to reduce our carbon footprint by up to 50% during this decade. This is being achieved through a combination of innovations, including a 40% reduction in the carbon intensity of concrete, 30% of all European buildings being made of sustainable wood, and using 90% green vehicles by 2030.
We are also cutting waste by reusing building components after their first life, improving quality and making construction processes safer and more efficient.
How environmentally and economically sustainable is today’s construction industry?
FB: To achieve environmental sustainability targets, the current industry focus is on carbon reduction. Reducing the energy and carbon demands of making, refurbishing and operating buildings means the industry can thrive together with the environment. The urgent need to reduce carbon emissions, pollution and physical waste means that construction players must evolve to save not just their companies, but the whole planet.
New regulations are adopted every year for the construction industry. Are these helping the industry become more sustainable?
FB: Internationally, authorities are imposing carbon taxes that force the industry to take more responsibility for its materials usage and working practices. These penalize companies that do not innovate and will force them out of business. Other regulations and agreements encourage environmentally positive changes in building management, including intensifying and diversifying usage through sharing office space and resources – space, energy, water and parking – with wider communities. This leads to greater asset usage, fewer buildings being required, and enhanced social, environmental and economic benefits.
What are the main drivers for the industry to take these actions?
FB: Taxes and regulations mean that companies are likely to make less profit until they reduce their exploitation of natural resources and lower their carbon emissions, as well as those of the buildings and infrastructure that they create. Many jobs and businesses therefore need to be reinvented. This means new types of organizations are emerging that use less energy but provide a cleaner and, ultimately, more profitable world. We can’t continue to sacrifice our climate by consuming fossil fuels, so everyone must innovate together in a shared circular economy.
Concrete manufacturing is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gases in the world. Can reliance on concrete be reduced?
FB: Concrete contributes more than 6% of our planet’s greenhouse gas emissions. Currently, it is a low-cost material, but a €100 [US$121] per ton tax is expected soon in Europe and elsewhere. This prospect is forcing the industry to innovate its materials science and usage. At Bouygues we are developing low-carbon concrete alternatives that divide concrete’s carbon footprint by two or three, and we are rapidly increasing wood construction for social housing to 25% over four years, because it stores rather than emits carbon.
How are virtualization and standardization affecting Bouygues?
FB: Virtualization, using an enterprise-wide platform, heralds a more integrated organizational approach that allows us to exercise in-house control over every aspect of our work. That means design, manufacture, transportation and assembly of building components can be optimized and standardized. [For example,] digital technology is enabling us to build factories that can manufacture 2,000 modular apartments per year that are quick, clean and easy to assemble at the worksite.
What else has Bouygues done to accelerate its environmental sustainability?
FB: As well as using wood and developing low-carbon building materials and assembly systems, we reduce the lifetime carbon emissions of buildings and structures and are endeavoring to cut these to zero. This is achieved through realistic simulation that fully reveals a building’s long-term environmental impact, then digitally engineering solutions such as improved insulation, airflow, energy usage and recycling strategies for enhanced sustainability.
We also digitally “bank” materials by keeping a database of components that have already been used in buildings. At the end of a structure’s life, these parts will be used again in other, future buildings.
Bouygues measures and monitors the progression of its sustainability, and employees are incentivized through bonuses related to carbon and waste reductions.
What technology does Bouygues deploy to advance sustainability, and what has it accomplished to date?
FB: Through a technology partnership, we are developing a unified, enterprise-wide business platform to digitally simulate, predict performance characteristics and thereby transform the design, engineering and operation of all our products, projects and processes. This provides the means for highly efficient low-carbon capabilities across all of Bouygues’ construction activities.
In Grenoble, France, we have delivered ABC (Autonomous Building for Citizens). It is the first low-carbon, autonomous social housing that generates and stores its own electricity, harvests rainfall and processes its waste into compost and biogas energy [gases produced by the breakdown of organic matter in the absence of oxygen]. The results have been a 40% reduction in household waste, and more than 107% of electricity demand is covered by the buildings’ solar farm. The building cuts residents’ piped-in water consumption by 70% and recovers heat from recyclable wastewater.
The project enhances social value and engagement for occupants through sharing building performance data and encouraging community actions. This helps occupants adapt to the changes that characterize urban society and learn how their new home works.
How can Bouygues extend these efforts to help entire cities to be more sustainable?
FB: Cities can become sustainable by producing their own energy, potable water and food from urban farms in new and refurbished buildings. We deploy high-performance, bioclimatic design technology that takes into account climate and environmental conditions to reduce the city’s carbon footprint. This means we can reimagine and build cities that decelerate climate change with hybrid buildings that generate their own energy.
Cities can also become more liveable, with easier, safer, soft transport such as walking and cycling, in addition to pollution-free buses and shared electric vehicles that are integrated with and charged by buildings.
What does the future of sustainable construction look like?
FB: We will increasingly see digitally developed modular construction that brings technically perfected, accurately made, low-carbon components cleanly to worksites for easy assembly. Innovative minds, enabled with digital technology that helps realize their visions, will deliver commercial and environmental sustainability to industry players that are prepared to embrace this crucial transformation.
What is Bouygues planning for the future?
FB: We are working toward a better future for humanity that reconciles business profit with sustainability. Ongoing research, development and virtualization are enabling rapid innovation of low-carbon construction materials and methods. This work is vital to safeguard our planet, because there is no vaccine for the climate.
Learn more about sustainability solutions for the construction industry.
