UTC is a part­ner of the devel­op­ment, notably eco­nom­ic, of the local com­mu­ni­ty. It has been an ini­tia­tor and/or stake­hold­er in major projects linked to the attrac­tive­ness of the ter­ri­to­ry for many years. Emmanuel Pas­cual, Munic­i­pal and Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil­lor, Del­e­gate for Inno­va­tion and Rela­tions with High­er Edu­ca­tion, explains. 

In its work, the local com­mu­ni­ty, whether it is the City Coun­cil of Com­piègne or the Greater Com­piègne author­i­ty (ARC), calls upon UTC to be accom­pa­nied. In this case, this work is done by the means of aca­d­e­m­ic CCs or project work­shops. This was the case on a large-scale project, such as the Eco-dis­trict of the Com­piègne/­Margny-lès- Com­piègne sta­tion. On this sub­ject alone, three project work­shops were mobilised. Two work­shops were organ­ised in spring 2019, with a com­mon theme of the «Rail­way sta­tion dis­trict: sus­tain­able and intel­li­gent dis­trict», each deal­ing with a spe­cif­ic aspect: one on con­sul­ta­tion with an sur­vey onboard and online about train trans­porta­tion and urban path­ways and a con­sul­ta­tion work­shop with the project’s stake­hold­ers, while the sec­ond one was devot­ed to the inno­va­tion aspect.

. «The results were very pos­i­tive. They pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for the stu­dents to present the results of the con­sul­ta­tion at a pub­lic meet­ing con­vened in Decem­ber 2019. Of course, the CRA depart­ments in charge of the Geo­graph­ic Infor­ma­tion Sys­tem (GIS) or Urban Plan­ning and Devel­op­ment some­times wel­come UTC Urban Engi­neer­ing (GU) trainees into their teams. These dif­fer­ent ways of work­ing pro­vide the teams and elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives with a dif­fer­ent vision, which feeds the reflec­tions for the con­struc­tion of the ter­ri­to­r­i­al projects. As you can see, we rely of course on the skills of UTC in urban engi­neer­ing, which are a real asset for our ter­ri­to­ry, but we also look for skills in inno­va­tion and project man­age­ment. It should be added that most of the stu­dents and lec­tur­ers are inhab­i­tants of the ter­ri­to­ry,» under­lines Emmanuel Pas­cual, Munic­i­pal and Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil­lor, Del­e­gate for Inno­va­tion and Rela­tions with High­er Edu­ca­tion since 2020, but also an INSA archi­tect, from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Indus­tries de Strasbourg.

A territory as a place for experimentation

The prox­im­i­ty of the links between the com­mu­ni­ty and UTC-Com­pieg­ne makes mul­ti­ple col­lab­o­ra­tions pos­si­ble. Indeed, it is a ques­tion of facil­i­tat­ing the imple­men­ta­tion, in real con­di­tions, of work that has passed sev­er­al stages in lab­o­ra­to­ry. This was the case for a project which con­sist­ed in equip­ping cer­tain bus lines with fixed and mobile sen­sors to test a new com­mu­ni­ca­tion architecture.

«More recent­ly, we worked along­side Manuela Sechi­lar­iu, at the Urban Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment, and the com­pa­ny Sys­tra, to devel­op a tool for siz­ing indi­vid­ual vehi­cle recharg­ing infra­struc­tures. ARC’s par­tic­i­pa­tion made it pos­si­ble to take into account the con­straints of a typ­i­cal ter­ri­to­ry, such as the num­ber of sur­face and under­ground park­ing spaces, flood zones, and the perime­ter pro­tect­ed by the archi­tect of the build­ings of France. Our par­tic­i­pa­tion has also made it pos­si­ble to draw up doc­u­ments for local author­i­ties, a sort of deci­sion-mak­ing tool,» con­tin­ues Emmanuel Pas­cual, for whom urban devel­op­ment also acts as a lever of attrac­tive­ness with more than 8 600 active estab­lish­ments and 41 200 jobs. Indus­try is very present here, rep­re­sent­ing more than 15% of total jobs, and the num­ber of research sci­en­tists in the area is also con­stant­ly grow­ing. We are pleased to wel­come many projects to the region. Very recent­ly, Plas­tic Omni­um announced the con­struc­tion of a hydro­gen tank man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in Com­piègne. This future site will have a pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty of 80 000 tanks per year and will pro­duce its first line prod­ucts by 2025. It will be the largest in Europe.